ArticlePsychopharmacology2015
Individual variation in the motivational properties of a nicotine cue: sign-trackers vs. goal-trackers.
Article in Psychopharmacology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Combined maternal separation and limited bedding-nesting increase goal tracking, delay discounting, and impulsive action, and moderate sign-tracking-perseverance associations in male rats.BMC neuroscience · 2026Article
- Nicotine enhances the ability of cues to control behavior and evoke dopamine release in the dorsolateral striatum.The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics · 2025Article
- The Incentive-Sensitization Theory of Addiction 30 Years On.Annual review of psychology · 2025Review
- Sex-associated differences in incentive salience and drinking behaviour in a rodent model of alcohol relapse.Addiction biology · 2025Article
- Mesocorticolimbic system reactivity to alcohol use-related visual cues as a function of alcohol sensitivity phenotype: A pilot fMRI study.Addiction neuroscience · 2024Article
- Individual variations in motives for nicotine self-administration in male rats: evidence in support for a precision psychopharmacology.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Investigating discriminative stimulus modulation of opioid seeking after conflict-induced abstinence in sign- and goal-tracking rats.Psychopharmacology · 2022Article
- The incentive amplifying effects of nicotine: Roles in alcohol seeking and consumption.Advances in pharmacology (San Diego, Calif.) · 2022Review
- Sex-dependent associations between addiction-related behaviors and the microbiome in outbred rats.EBioMedicine · 2020Article
- Translations in Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing: Autoshaping of Learner Vocalizations.Perspectives on behavior science · 2020Article
- Evidence for incentive salience sensitization as a pathway to alcohol use disorder.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2019Review
- Attentional capacities prior to drug exposure predict motivation to self-administer nicotine.Psychopharmacology · 2018Article
- Nicotine-enhanced Pavlovian conditioned approach is resistant to omission of expected outcome.Behavioural brain research · 2018Article
- Long-lasting contribution of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens core, but not dorsal lateral striatum, to sign-tracking.The European journal of neuroscience · 2017Article
- Sex and Adolescent Ethanol Exposure Influence Pavlovian Conditioned Approach.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2017Article
- Orbitofrontal participation in sign- and goal-tracking conditioned responses: Effects of nicotine.Neuropharmacology · 2017Article
- P3 event-related potential reactivity to smoking cues: Relations with craving, tobacco dependence, and alcohol sensitivity in young adult smokers.Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors · 2017Article
- Individual Variations in the Mechanisms of Nicotine Seeking: A Key for Research on Nicotine Dependence.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2017Article
- Chronic Nicotine Exposure Initiated in Adolescence and Unpaired to Behavioral Context Fails to Enhance Sweetened Ethanol Seeking.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2017Article
- The tendency to sign-track predicts cue-induced reinstatement during nicotine self-administration, and is enhanced by nicotine but not ethanol.Psychopharmacology · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleIndividuals vary in the extent to which they attribute incentive salience to reward cues. Discrete food and drug (cocaine and opioid) cues become more attractive, eliciting approach toward them, and more "wanted," in that they serve as more effective conditioned reinforcers, in some rats (sign-trackers, STs), than in others (goal-trackers, GTs).
objectivesWe asked whether there is similar variation in the extent to which a cue associated with a drug from another class, nicotine, acquires incentive motivational properties.
methodsFirst, a Pavlovian conditioned approach procedure was used to identify rats that attribute incentive salience to a food cue (i.e., STs and GTs). We then measured the extent to which a cue (a light) paired with intravenous nicotine injections acquired two properties of an incentive stimulus: (1) the ability to elicit approach toward it, and (2) the ability to act as a conditioned reinforcer.
resultsIn contrast to previous findings with food, cocaine, and opioid cues, we found that the nicotine cue was equally attractive in STs and GTs, eliciting dose-dependent approach behavior in both. However, the nicotine cue was a more effective conditioned reinforcer in STs than in GTs.
conclusionsWe suggest the dissociation between these two measures of incentive salience attribution may be related to the fact that when present (as in the test of Pavlovian approach), nicotine can act as a potent "incentive amplifier," and by this action, nicotine may render cues especially salient for all animals.
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