Drug info - Rats More Addicted to Sugar Than Cocaine

[Perception Addict]

RATS MORE ADDICTED TO SUGAR THAN COCAINE

LOS ANGELES - Researchers have learned that rats overwhelmingly prefer water sweetened with saccharin to cocaine, a finding that demonstrates the addictive potential of sweets.

Offering larger doses of cocaine did not alter the rats' preference for saccharin.

Scientists said the study, presented this week in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, might help explain the rise in human obesity, which has been driven, in part, by an overconsumption of sugary foods.

"Intense sweetness is more rewarding to the rats than cocaine," said co-author Magalie Lenoir of the University of Bordeaux in France.

[fnord]

RATS MORE ADDICTED TO SUGAR THAN COCAINE

grandma always says theres more sugar then coke in her bags,maybe this sugar craze could be a sign of diabeties? Researchers have learned that rats overwhelmingly prefer water sweetened with saccharin to cocaine,

huh thats wierd that rats dont like stuff that tastes like chewed up asprin?

Offering larger doses of cocaine did not alter the rats' preference for saccharin.

hmm even more weird adding more nasty flavor dosent make the the rats eat them?


Scientists said the study, might help explain the rise in human obesity, which has been driven, in part, by an overconsumption of sugary foods.

i see so those that happen to prefer cocaine over sugar might possible be less obese?

[Alfa]

Can someone add this study to the file archive?

[Perception Addict]

I just found the actual study here:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:...l.pone.0000698

I'll see what I can do about uploading it in a moment.

EDIT: uploaded the full study to the archives.

[ReAlitY-HoLds-NonE]

What is the cognitive capacity of a rat? -are they able to asscoiate the effects they get from cocaine with anything?...namely the solution??

If you were a child, and for some f*cked up reason this test was run on you and a few others, you drink the two solutions at diffirent times, not knowing what is in them... what would you logicall do?- finish the sweet solution, and not finish the clinically bitter tasting one. Hmmm. Would you even be able to drink enough to feel the effects?
and even if you had drunk all of the solution, would you, as a child, be able to associate that 'euphoric-buzz' to what you had just drunk?... maybe.. but a rat, with their cognitive capacity, is highly, highly doubted.

[Paracelsus]

^^^ Rats usually prefer water laced with addictive drugs to plain water and will continue administering the drug-laced water. This is well-proven.

[jazzmetalguitar]

SWIM is almost certain that this has much less to do with the comparative addictive properties and more with factors about food and the taste systems which are not yet known. Here is a study which focuses on the actions of the gustatory reward system:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...1f4421c3#secx2

The implications here and in another article SWIM will find is that taste sensations and drugs target the same dopamine reward paths (thought that VTA and frontal lobe cause intensity of pleasure and nucleus accumbens in the end point of DA stimulation the source of the reward, pleasure, and the addiction). Not only this, but logic (research obviously needed) suggests that these food rewards are naturally programmed due to necessity. Taste probably is how the body knows it is fed (see in study above tasteless administration of saccharin; no dopamine reward). There are endless possibilities here because we know so little.

[jazzmetalguitar]

Originally Posted by ReAlitY-HoLds-NonE

What is the cognitive capacity of a rat? what would you logicall do?- finish the sweet solution, and not finish the clinically bitter tasting one. Hmmm. Would you even be able to drink enough to feel the effects?

Note that the study used lever mechanisms for administration of the desired substance. The saccharin-lever led to presentation of liquid, however, the cocaine-lever was linked to a mechanism placed in their backs which administers it intravenously (this is common is cocaine/addiction tests on rats). So taste wasn't a cocaine factor. Regardless, bitter is a taste the brain knows too...it has its affects.

[Alfa]

Conclusions

Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.

It is odd how researchers can derive various conclusions from a study. The thesis effects the outcome of the study; they may be right in their conclusion, but what if saccharine as a substance just is more addictive than cocaine?? That seems to be the most obvious conclusion, while the above conclusion can only be correct if other sugars also give the same addictive effects.

[Ikku]

They didn't just make up all of those ideas in their conclusion. The experiment showed that sweetness is addictive. It was already well known that the hyper-sensitivity to sugar evolved in sugar-poor environments. Mammals have no mechanism to "shut-off" the desire for more sugar, the more they consume, the more the pleasure receptors in their brain go off. That's because there was never an evolutionary pressure for such a system, sweetness was rare enough that organisms ran out of sweet stuff to consume long before they had enough for it to be detrimental. Nowadays of course humans have no shortage of sweets. This is why obesity is such a big problem in the United States.

The conclusion in the study isn't that sugars are addictive, or that mammals evolved without a mechanism to shut off sugar intake, the conclusion is that sugars are addictive because of this lack of a shut off mechanism. The study was used to connect those ideas.