14/03/2021
team from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) focused on drug addiction research have pioneered a new way to study frustration as a factor in substance use disorders. The study was published in the medical journal Psychopharmacology.
Traditional addiction research has focused on three aspects of substance use disorders: craving, impulsivity, or habit. Scientists hypothesized that a fourth factor, frustration, could also lead to escalation of drug use and addiction.
The Psychopharmacology paper noted that research into the role of frustration and substance use disorders is sparse, but a number of studies suggest that persons with substance use disorders have lower frustration tolerance. Studies have shown that sensitivity to frustration correlates with relapse among those with substance use disorders.
The UTMB studies used a rat model to focus on frustration-related behavior. Rats can be trained to press a lever for food or drugs (reinforcers), and frustration is defined as when a subject is unable to achieve a reinforcer, receives less of a reinforcer than anticipated, or has to work harder to achieve a reinforcer.
“An example of frustration behavior is when someone can’t get the channel on the TV to change or when an elevator takes too long to arrive. People will often respond to both situations by pressing the button repeatedly or holding the button longer with repeated attempts. This typical human response to frustration is the same in rats. In our study, rats were trained to press a lever for delivery of either a sucrose pellet or an intravenous infusion of a synthetic opioid. If they didn’t get what they expected, they would press the lever more frequently and for longer periods of time,” said Dr. Thomas A. Green, of UTMB’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.
