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Dopamine D1 receptor and effort-based decision making in rats: The moderating effect of sex by Kate M. Witt; David N. Harper; Bart A. Ellenbroek is a Neuroscience article available to read on EtoBox.

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Dopamine is a modulating factor in effort-based decision-making, and emerging evidence from pharmacological research suggests that the dopamine D1 receptor is the primary regulator. Given the limited selectivity of pharmacological tools, we further explored this hypothesis using dopamine D1 mutant (DAD1−/−) rats which have a specific genetic reduction in functional D1 receptors. Moreover, given the strong focus on males in neuroscience research in general and in the role of D1 receptors in effort-based learning, we compared both sexes in the present study. Adult male and female DAD1−/− mutant rats and wild type controls were trained to press a lever for a reinforcer. Once trained, subjects completed multiple fixed ratio, progressive ratio, and operant effort-choice (concurrent progressive ratio/chow feeding task [PROG/chow]) experiments. We predicted that DAD1−/− mutant rats would press the lever significantly less than controls across all experiments, have lower breakpoints, and consume more freely available food. As predicted, DAD1−/− mutant rats (regardless of sex) pressed the lever significantly less than controls and had lower breakpoints. Interestingly, there was a sex * geno

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Author

Kate M. Witt; David N. Harper; Bart A. Ellenbroek

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Published

2023

Language

EN

Field

Neuroscience (Life Sciences)