The multiple faces of footshock punishment in animal research on addiction

Engeln M(1), Ahmed SH(2).

Author information:
(1)Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, INCIA, UMR 5287, F-33000 Bordeaux, France. Electronic
address: .
(2)Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, INCIA, UMR 5287, F-33000 Bordeaux, France. Electronic
address: .

Continued drug use despite negative consequences is a hallmark of addiction
commonly modelled in rodents using punished drug intake. Over the years,
addiction research highlighted two subpopulations of punishment sensitive and
resistant animals. While helpful to interrogate the neurobiology of drug-related
behaviors, these procedures carry some weaknesses that need to be recognized and
eventually defused. Mainly focusing on footshock-related work, we will first
discuss the criteria used to define punishment-resistant animals and how their
relative arbitrariness may impact our findings. With the overarching goal of
improving our interpretation of the punishment-resistant phenotype, we will
evaluate how tailored punishment protocols may better apprehend resistance to
punishment, and how testing the robustness of punishment resistance could yield
new results and strengthen interpretations. Second, we will question whether and
to what extent punishment sensitivity, as currently defined, is reflective of
abstinence and suggest that punishment resistance is, in fact, a prerequisite to
model abstinence from addiction. Again, we will examine how challenging the
robustness of the punishment-sensitive phenotype may help to better characterize
it. Finally, we will evaluate whether diminished relapse-like behavior after
repeated punishment-induced abstinence could not only contribute to better
understand the mechanisms of abstinence, but also uniquely model progressive
recovery (i.e., after repeated failed attempts at recovery) which is the norm in
people with addiction. Altogether, by questioning the strengths and weaknesses
of our models, we would like to open discussions on the different ways we
interpret punishment sensitivity and resistance and the aspects that remain to
be explored.

Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2024.107955
PMID: 38944108

Conflict of interest statement: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors
declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this
paper.

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