Post-retrieval extinction can attenuate recovery and reinstatement of conditioned reactivity to alcohol cues in Long-Evans rats

Conditioned reactivity to alcohol-associated cues contributes to relapse in alcohol use disorder. Cue exposure (extinction) therapy can reduce reactivity, but reactivity can endure. One idea for why this might happen is that response-inhibition learned during treatment may be encoded into a new memory that must later compete with existing response-exciting associative memories. However, it may be possible to update the original alcohol-related associative memory with response-inhibiting information by conducting treatment during reconsolidation of the memory —retrieval-induced de- and re-stabilization of the memory.

Source: Alcohol - May 1, 2017 Category: Addiction Authors: Roberto U. Cofres í, Nadia Chaudhri, Hongjoo J. Lee, Marie H. Monfils, Rueben A. Gonzales Source Type: research