TY - JOUR
KW - Addiction
KW - Animals
KW - Behavior, Addictive
KW - Choice Behavior
KW - Clinical Studies as Topic
KW - Disease Models, Animal
KW - Humans
KW - Language
KW - Memory
KW - Reproducibility of Results
KW - Translational Research, Biomedical
KW - animal models
KW - compulsion
KW - habit
KW - Language
KW - pharmacotherapy
AU - Matt Field
AU - Inge Kersbergen
AB - BACKGROUND: Pre-clinical research involving non-human animals has made important contributions to our understanding of risk factors for addiction, neuroadaptations that follow chronic drug exposure and to the development of some efficacious pharmacotherapies for addiction. Despite these contributions, we argue that animal models of addiction have impeded progress in our understanding of addiction and its treatment in humans.
ARGUMENT: First, the majority of pharmacological treatments that were initially developed using animal models have failed to prove effective for the treatment of addiction in humans, resulting in a huge waste of resources. Secondly, we demonstrate that prevailing animal models that portray addiction as a disorder of compulsion and habit cannot be reconciled with observations that psychoactive drug use in humans is a goal-directed operant behaviour that remains under the control of its consequences, even in people who are addicted. Thirdly, addiction may be a uniquely human phenomenon that is dependent on language, which necessarily limits the validity of animal models. Finally, we argue that addicted brains must be understood as one component of broader networks of symptoms and environmental and social factors that are impossible to model in laboratory animals.
CONCLUSIONS: A case can be made that animal models of addiction have not served us well in understanding and treating addiction in humans. It is important to reconsider some widely held beliefs about the nature of addictive behaviour in humans that have arisen from the zeal to translate observations of laboratory animals.
BT - Addiction
DA - 2020-01
DO - 10.1111/add.14764
IS - 1
LA - eng
N2 - BACKGROUND: Pre-clinical research involving non-human animals has made important contributions to our understanding of risk factors for addiction, neuroadaptations that follow chronic drug exposure and to the development of some efficacious pharmacotherapies for addiction. Despite these contributions, we argue that animal models of addiction have impeded progress in our understanding of addiction and its treatment in humans.
ARGUMENT: First, the majority of pharmacological treatments that were initially developed using animal models have failed to prove effective for the treatment of addiction in humans, resulting in a huge waste of resources. Secondly, we demonstrate that prevailing animal models that portray addiction as a disorder of compulsion and habit cannot be reconciled with observations that psychoactive drug use in humans is a goal-directed operant behaviour that remains under the control of its consequences, even in people who are addicted. Thirdly, addiction may be a uniquely human phenomenon that is dependent on language, which necessarily limits the validity of animal models. Finally, we argue that addicted brains must be understood as one component of broader networks of symptoms and environmental and social factors that are impossible to model in laboratory animals.
CONCLUSIONS: A case can be made that animal models of addiction have not served us well in understanding and treating addiction in humans. It is important to reconsider some widely held beliefs about the nature of addictive behaviour in humans that have arisen from the zeal to translate observations of laboratory animals.
PY - 2020
SP - 6
EP - 12
T2 - Addiction
TI - Are animal models of addiction useful?
VL - 115
SN - 1360-0443
ER -