Reflections on the past 40 Years of Behavioral Pharmacology Research on Problems of Drug Abuse

• Author: George E. Bigelow,Sharon L. Walsh,Robert L. Balster
• DOI: 10.1177/002204260903900111
• Published date: 01 January 2009
• Date: 01 January 2009
• Subject Matter: Article

© 2009 BY THE JOURNAL OF DRUG ISSUES

JOURNAL OF DRUG ISSUES 0022-0426/09/01 133-152

__________

Robert L. Balster, Ph.D., is Director of the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies, Butler Professor

of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Virginia

Commonwealth University. He has published over 250 scientif‌i c articles in animal behavioral pharmacology

and other areas and is editor-in-chief of Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Sharon L. Walsh, Ph.D., is

Director of the Center on Drug and Alcohol Research, Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Adjunct

Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Kentucky. She has published over 70 scientif‌i c papers on

the behavioral pharmacology of substance abuse treatment in humans. George E. Bigelow, Ph.D., is

Director of the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry

and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has published over 200

scientif‌i c articles on the human behavioral pharmacology of substance abuse and on substance abuse

treatment.

REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST 40 YEARS OF BEHAVIORAL

PHARMACOLOGY RESEARCH ON PROBLEMS OF DRUG

ABUSE

ROBERT L. BALSTER, SHARON L. WALSH, GEORGE E. BIGELOW

Behavioral pharmacology research has made important contributions to the

conceptualization of addictions and to the treatment and prevention of substance

abuse. It has its intellectual roots in the experimental analysis of behavior and close

ties with experimental and clinical pharmacology. Because substance abusers self-

administer drugs repeatedly, this presents the opportunity for learning to occur. The

application of learning theory to the laboratory study of drug effects in both animals

and humans has been a major contribution of behavioral pharmacology research.

Principles derived from over 40 years of behavioral pharmacology research are now

widely accepted in the addiction f‌i eld and have contributed to the development of

both pharmacological and behavioral treatments. Drug abuse prevention through

the assessment of the abuse liability of new medications has also been an important

applied area of research in the f‌i eld. Personal ref‌l ections of three behavioral

pharmacologists provide examples of important inf‌l uences in the f‌i eld.

INTRODUCTION

Behavioral pharmacology research grew from roots in experimental psychology

and the experimental analysis of behavior to address drug effects on behavior and

how the contexts in which drugs are used can determine their effects. This paper

134 JOURNAL OF DRUG ISSUES

BALSTER, WALSH, BIGELOW

provides an historical overview of contributions of both animal and human behavioral

pharmacology research to the study of drug abuse. Behavioral pharmacologists

developed important laboratory animal models for the learned aspects of drug

abuse that subsequently led to close counterparts in human research. Some of the

most important models use studies of the stimulus properties of drugs where they

function as conditioned or unconditioned stimuli in classical conditioning and

discriminative or reinforcing stimuli in operant learning. Important applications of

behavioral pharmacology research have helped form learning theories of addiction,

assess the abuse potential of medications, and develop both pharmacological and

behavioral treatments for addiction.

ANIMAL BEHAVIORAL PHARMACOLOGY

Behavioral pharmacology research grew from the interdisciplinary work of

pharmacologists and behavioral scientists. One domain of behavioral sciences

particularly well-represented among early researchers was the experimental analysis

of behavior as articulated by Skinner (1938), a f‌i eld of research that utilized scientif‌i c

methods described by Sidman (1960). An important early focus of the work,

exemplif‌i ed by the work of Dews and others, was on the interactions of drugs with

behavior (e.g., Barrett, 2002; Morse & Kelleher, 1970). In well-controlled laboratory

studies in animals, it was shown that the specif‌i c effect that a drug produced on

behavior depended, to a large extent, on the behavioral history of the animal and on

what the animal had been trained to do when the drug was administered. Depending

on the specif‌i ed schedule of reinforcement, amphetamine could either stimulate or

suppress behavior. The observation in the animal laboratory that drug effects were

not the immutable result of their pharmacological properties but could differ from

animal to animal, from time to time, and from circumstance to circumstance, was

consistent with the observation of similar response variability in humans. Previously,

individual differences in addictive behavior evident in the general population were

attributed to moral weakness or personality defects in substance abusers or perhaps

to genetically inherited f‌l aws. Whatever the basis, substance abuse and addiction

were seen as problems of a f‌l awed minority. Behavioral pharmacology offered a

perspective from which to study the way drugs of abuse produced their behavioral

and addictive effects that could account for the variability seen in clinical populations.

Early animal behavioral pharmacologists studied classes of drugs beyond those

with abuse potential (Pickens, 1977). Behavioral pharmacology evolved in parallel

with the development of many new types of psychotherapeutic medications (e.g.,

antipsychotics, antidepressants, and anxiolytics). Indeed, behavioral pharmacologists

were active in developing animal test procedures to model and predict desired

clinical responses to these medications. For example, drugs with anti-anxiety