Despite major advances in both the preclinical and clinical addiction fields, the number of US citizens afflicted by substance use disorders (SUDs) and the lethal overdose outcomes has continuously increased over the past two decades. To tackle this alarming health issue and understanding the neurobiology of those disorders, intravenous self-administration procedures have been used as the gold standard for rodent SUD models. However, despite being one of the most reliable procedures, with clear face validity, this procedure is still limited by its tethered nature, constraining its use to restricted spaces in which rodents are exposed to unenriched environments with limited or no access food, water, or social interaction.

In this project we will establish wirelessly controlled intravenous self-administration experiments in complex and more ethologically- relevant environments such as enriched laboratory homecages.

We envision that these new open-source approaches will broaden the translational value of pre-clinical SUD models by enabling new experimental designs to improve current strategies aiming at developing substance use disorders treatments.