בחינת המהירה דופמין Dynamics עם הסריקה מהירה Voltammetry המחזורי במהלך פנים הפה Tastant מנהל בחולדות ערה

Phasic DA release plays an important role in mediating reward-directed behavior ^[1-3]. However, isolating and studying how a primary reward alters phasic DA release is often complicated by co-occurring behavioral or cognitive processes that are also capable of altering phasic DA release – such as decision making processes or reward-directed motor behavior to acquire the reward. In the current work, we isolate phasic DA responses to tastants through the use of in vivo fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV) combined with tastant delivery through intraoral cannulae. This technique bypasses choice and action and allows us to examine extracellular DA release during direct infusion of a tastant to the palate of a rat.

FSCV is an electrochemical technique with high temporal and spatial resolution, permitting measurements of DA release in a discrete local area (approximately 100 µm) on a sub-second scale (10 Hz resolution). The combination of intra-oral delivery and FSCV provides the advantage of observing rapid, ‘real-time’ DA responses to a tastant, which cannot be examined using conventional microdialysis methods. Furthermore, phasic DA release in response to either rewards or reward-associated cues occurs at concentrations between 20-100 nM, which is above the 10-20 nM detection threshold for FSCV ^[4]. The high spatial resolution of FSCV also permits recording from sub-regions of small brain areas, such as the nucleus accumbens core (NAc). Thus, FSCV combined with intraoral infusions of tastants is an ideal model for studying how tastants or other stimuli alter phasic DA release in an awake, behaving animals. Indeed, these techniques have permitted experiments investigating how rewarding and aversive tastants alter extracellular DA release ^[5].

Over the last decade, FSCV analyses have been successfully combined with intravenous drug delivery ^[6] and rat self-administration paradigms ^{[7, 8]} to identify the role of phasic DA mechanisms in drug addiction models. In addition, combined intraoral delivery with FSCV has been used to examine how tastant cues paired with cocaine availability modulate phasic DA release and behavioral responses that reflect emotional affect ^[3]. This combined intraoral and FSCV methodology can also be powerfully utilized to examine phasic DA responses to flavorants, such as menthol and oral sweeteners, that are added to cigarettes and dissolvable tobacco products ^[9-11]. Although many of the flavorants added to tobacco products are appetitive ^[9-11], it is unknown if these flavorants increase phasic DA release in a manner consistent with a rewarding hedonic valence. Indeed, flavorants added to cigarettes and to dissolvable tobacco products may have direct effects on the DA reward system and may act through dopaminergic mechanisms to influence the rewarding valence of cigarettes and other tobacco products. Thus, intraoral delivery combined with FSCV can provide new understanding on how flavorants modulate rapid DA release. The use of combined intra-oral and in vivo FSCV methodology, and the data obtained from such studies, can also facilitate future studies to determine how flavorants and nicotine interact to alter DA signaling and to potentially modulate nicotine reinforcement. Further, the data gained from such studies can be used to inform regulatory decisions about tobacco product flavorants.