Effects of chronic nicotine on autoshaping acquisition and extinction

Learning and motivational processes have been central for a modern understanding of tobacco addiction. In particular, there is growing evidence highlighting the importance of incentive motivational processes for the maintenance of tobacco addiction. The present experiment evaluated the effects of chronic nicotine on the incentive value of a natural reward paired with an environmental cue during acquisition and extinction in a Pavlovian autoshaping procedure with rats. We found that chronic administration of a nicotine dose with translational value for human research had an enhancing effect on responding to an environmental cue during late autoshaping acquisition, but there was no evidence that it affected extinction. Our results are consistent with the role of nicotine enhancing the incentive value of stimuli during acquisition on a Pavlovian autoshaping task and suggest future research on the conditions necessary for the expression of nicotine enhancement in Pavlovian autoshaping tasks.