RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Disrupted Decision-Making: EcoHIV Inoculation Following a History of Cocaine Use
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.05.13.491868
DO 10.1101/2022.05.13.491868
A1 Kristen A. McLaurin
A1 Hailong Li
A1 Charles F. Mactutus
A1 Steven B. Harrod
A1 Rosemarie M. Booze
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/05/15/2022.05.13.491868.abstract
AB Independently, chronic cocaine use and HIV-1 viral protein exposure induce neuroadaptations in the frontal-striatal circuit; how the frontal-striatal circuit responds to HIV-1 infection following chronic drug use, however, has remained elusive. After establishing a history of both sucrose and cocaine self-administration, a pretest-posttest experimental design was utilized to evaluate preference judgment, a simple form of decision-making dependent upon the integrity of frontal- striatal circuit function. During the pretest assessment, male rats exhibited a clear preference for cocaine, whereas female animals preferred sucrose. Two posttest evaluations (3 Days and 6 Weeks Post Inoculation) revealed that, independent of biological sex, inoculation with chimeric HIV (EcoHIV), but not saline, disrupted decision-making. Prominent structural alterations in frontal-striatal circuit dysfunction were evidenced by synaptodendritic alterations in pyramidal neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex. Thus, the EcoHIV rat affords a biological system to model how the frontal-striatal circuit responds to HIV-1 infection following chronic drug use.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.