Soami F. Zenoni
Current Organizations / Institutes
The organizations/institutes from the scholar's latest article
Research Subjects
Soami F. Zenoni has a total of 19 co-authors. Here are the top co-authors by number of shared publications:
- Aldo Badiani
Department of Psychology, University of Sussex, UK
1 shared publication - Andrea Termine
Data Science Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation IRCCS, Rome, Italy
1 shared publication - Carlo Fabrizio
Data Science Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation IRCCS, Rome, Italy
1 shared publication - Claudia Marchetti
Department of Neuroscience Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Rome Italy
1 shared publication - Daniela Maftei
University of Rome Sapienza
1 shared publication - Daniele Caprioli
Department of Physiology and Pharmacology Sapienza University of Rome Rome Italy
1 shared publication
Latest Publications
- Open Access
Translating human drug use patterns into rat models: exploring spontaneous interindividual differences via refined drug self-administration procedures
Heroin and cocaine users tailor their dosage and frequency of use, as well as their method of administration, to maximize the drugs’ pleasurable effects and prevent withdrawal symptoms. On the other hand, many preclinical self-administration and choice experiments employ fixed unit doses and mandatory timeouts after doses (known as discrete dimension procedures). These restrictions fail to consider the distinct pharmacokinetic properties of heroin and cocaine, leading to uniform and comparable behaviors (including drug-taking patterns). This uniformity contrasts sharply with the significantly different ways humans use heroin and cocaine, which are characterized by highly individualized drug use behaviors. Here, we introduce a no-timeout procedure that overcomes this limitation (continuous dimension procedure). We analyzed the heroin and cocaine taking- and seeking-patterns and estimated drug-brain levels in the presence or absence of timeout between drug injections. We further assessed how absence of timeout and the availability of drug or social peer (access time to the two rewards) affect drug preference. Removing the timeout had a profound effect on pattern of heroin taking and seeking, promoting the emergence of burst-like drug intake and social withdrawal as revealed by a discrete choice procedure. On the other hand, timeout removal had a lesser impact on cocaine taking and seeking and did not impact social preference. By removing timeout during self-administration and increasing the access time during choice resulted in a self-administration procedure that more closely mimic human heroin intake, offering a platform to identify novel medications.
Open AccessTranslating human drug use patterns into rat models: exploring spontaneous interindividual differences via refined drug self-administration procedures
Heroin and cocaine users tailor their dosage and frequency of use, as well as their method of administration, to maximize the drugs’ pleasurable effects and prevent withdrawal symptoms. On the other hand, many preclinical self-administration and choice experiments employ fixed unit doses and mandatory timeouts after doses (known as discrete dimension procedures). These restrictions fail to consider the distinct pharmacokinetic properties of heroin and cocaine, leading to uniform and comparable behaviors (including drug-taking patterns). This uniformity contrasts sharply with the significantly different ways humans use heroin and cocaine, which are characterized by highly individualized drug use behaviors. Here, we introduce a no-timeout procedure that overcomes this limitation (continuous dimension procedure). We analyzed the heroin and cocaine taking- and seeking-patterns and estimated drug-brain levels in the presence or absence of timeout between drug injections. We further assessed how absence of timeout and the availability of drug or social peer (access time to the two rewards) affect drug preference. Removing the timeout had a profound effect on pattern of heroin taking and seeking, promoting the emergence of burst-like drug intake and social withdrawal as revealed by a discrete choice procedure. On the other hand, timeout removal had a lesser impact on cocaine taking and seeking and did not impact social preference. By removing timeout during self-administration and increasing the access time during choice resulted in a self-administration procedure that more closely mimic human heroin intake, offering a platform to identify novel medications.