Tiffany Aguirre / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Linda Perrotti
Withdrawal symptoms associated with Opioid Use Disorder are aversive and can lead to cue associations. While past research indicate women exhibit greater cue-reactivity, studies on sex differences in opioid addiction are limited. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate sex differences in the motivational consequences of opioid withdrawal using a conditioned place aversion paradigm (CPA). Male and female rats underwent four-day conditioning cycles with morphine pretreatment followed by naloxone-precipitated withdrawal. Results show both groups developed CPA, indicating no significant sex differences. The idea of convergent sex differences suggests that males and females may exhibit similar behavior, however the underlying processes driving them may differ. Therefore, we stained sections of brain tissue for c-Fos. Quantification of activated cells revealed that male rats had significantly higher c-Fos positive cells in the infralimbic and prelimbic cortex, nucleus accumbens core and shell compared to females, whereas females had significantly higher c-Fos positive cells in the ventral tegmental area. The data produced here indicates that two influential pathways are more active in males than females, suggesting that males make stronger associations to aversive conditions. Because this pathway was not active in females, perhaps there is a different pathway that moderates aversion in females.
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