Gabapentin Discriminative Stimulus Effects

<p>Gabapentin (Neurontin®), an anticonvulsant drug, is primarily prescribed for neuropathic pain and epileptic seizures. Gabapentin is an inhibitor of the voltage gated calcium channel (VGCC) subunit α₂δ-1. Due to its unique binding site, gabapentin is widely thought to have low abuse potential, and therefore has had increasing prescription rates. Increasing overall use of gabapentin has led to concerns of recreational abuse and polysubstance use with alcohol and opioids. The interoceptive effect similarities between gabapentin and alcohol demand further investigation. Drug discrimination is a standard operant paradigm in which subjects are trained to differentiate between one drug’s subjective effects versus others in an operant task. The proposed study aimed to determine if alcohol may substitute or enhance the drug effects of gabapentin when established as a discriminative stimulus as well as GABA_A and NMDA ligands. Ten female Sprague-Dawley rats were trained on a drug discrimination paradigm using a 300.0 mg/kg gabapentin training dose as a discriminative stimulus. Gabapentin was successfully established as a discriminative stimulus with full substitution (> 80% drug-lever responding) for the training dose and 100.0 mg/kg. The GABA_Areceptor agonist muscimol and NMDA noncompetitive receptor antagonist MK-801 partially substituted for the gabapentin discriminative stimulus. NMDA receptor agonism attenuated the effects of gabapentin. Ethanol partially substituted for gabapentin and potentiated gabapentin’s stimulus effects in combination testing. The results indicate partial overlap of the stimulus effects between gabapentin and GABA_Aand NMDA ligands.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychological Science

Year dc:date.available

2026

Author dc:creator

• Donar, Andrew

Contributors dc:contributor

• Adam Prus

• Gabapentin
• Psychopharmacology
• Neuroscience
• Addiction
• Alcohol
• Psychology
• Drug Discrimination
• GABA
• NMDA
• Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms
• Biological Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/911

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:commons.nmu.edu:theses-1987