Funding
Canadian Institutes of Health Research - PA: Sex and Gender in Health Research (Bridge)
'Modulating cocaine seeking by gonadal hormones in rats: sex differences in neural mechanisms of relapse-like behaviour ' 2023-2024
Cocaine use disorder (CUD) causes adverse health outcomes for millions of people. Gonadal hormones 17ßestradiol (E2) and progesterone (P4) respectively potentiate and inhibit motivation for cocaine. The goal of this proposal is to investigate the mechanisms of the modulation of relapse risk by gonadal hormones using the rat self-administration reinstatement model of CUD. We expect to uncover novel brain regions, receptors, and circuitries involved in mediating the divergent effects of estrogen and progesterone on cocaine relapse risk. These insights may aid in the development of pharmacotherapeutic treatments for CUD and improve the lives of Canadians.
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant RGPIN-2019-05147
'Manipulating the nature of internal stimuli through conditioning' 2019-2025
The purpose of this research program is to determine the behavioural and neural mechanisms of how an appetitive versus an aversive learning history with a perceptible drug state alters the value of that drug. More specific goals include: 1) determining the behavioural impact of interoceptive conditioning history on value for distinct interoceptive states and underlying associative behavioural structures; 2) determining the effects of competitive extinction of an interoceptive drug stimulus element of a compound interoceptive/exteroceptive conditioned stimulus on the subsequent stimulus value; and 3) beginning to elucidate the neural circuitry underlying the perception of an interoceptive stimulus and how such manipulations alter its acquired appetitive or aversive value.
National Institutes on Drug Abuse - R03 DA045740
'Impact of adding tobacco constituents nornicotine and anatabine on self-administered nicotine ' 2019-2022
There are rapidly-emerging populations who are initiating their nicotine use disorder by ‘vaping’ electronic cigarettes rather than through actual tobacco products. There is early evidence that those individuals who begin consuming nicotine in electronic/vaping form have a greater chance of transitioning to tobacco consumption than their never-using peers. The interactions between nicotine and constituent tobacco compounds have not yet been addressed in the context of this enhanced risk of tobacco abuse following nicotine pre-exposure. The objective of this research is to begin to fill that scientific gap by assessing the impact of the addition of select constituent compounds to nicotine in an intravenous self-administration model in male and female adult and adolescent rats.
Canada Foundation for Innovation – John R. Evans Leaders Fund #38866
'Impact of learning history on individual susceptibility to developing an addiction phenotype' 2019 and ongoing
This equipment grant provides the tools to investigate the behavioural and neural mechanisms that underlie the development of addiction-like behavioural phenotypes. The experimental questions range from developmental factors, inter-individual differences, and sex differences and are investigated from behavioural, neurochemical, and neurophysiological levels of analysis. As such, this grant supports the purchase and maintenance of setting up additional operant chambers that are fitted with fast-scan cyclic voltammetry and optogenetics equipment to perform in vivo measurements and manipulations.