Abstinence from cocaine intake induces changes in neuronal activity in the BLA after 26-45 days of withdrawal, but not 1-3 days of withdrawal
Previous studies have shown that chronic cocaine intake increases the spontaneous firing rate of BLA neurons after 15 days of abstinence (Munshi et al., 2019) and that the BLA is part of the regulating circuit that decreases tonic DA (Chang and Grace, 2014). Here, we investigated the firing rate and the percentage of spikes firing in burst of BLA neurons in saline and cocaine rats after 1-3 and 26-45 days of abstinence (Figure 3). An example of the location of the recording electrode is presented inĀ Figure 3A. An example of spike doublet and triplet (Rainnie et al., 1993) recorded from a putative projection neuron (Washburn and Moises, 1992; Bienvenu et al., 2012) in the BLA and an example of a spike shape (averaged over 5 minutes) are presented in Figure 3B. We found a significant interaction between time and drug effects fot the firing rate (Figure 3C, D) and the percentage of spikes in burst (Figure 3 C, D) in cocaine WD26-45 rats. Post-hoc analysis revealed a significant difference between saline WD26-45 and cocaine WD 30, saline WD1-3 and cocaine WD26-45 and cocaine WD1-3 and cocaine WD26-45 for the firing rate and a significant difference between cocaine WD1-3 and cocaine WD26-45 for the percentage of spikes in burst.