Date of Award

12-2012

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Lisa E. Baker

Second Advisor

Dr. Alan Poling

Third Advisor

Dr. Cynthia Pietras

Keywords

Salvia Divnorum, Salvinorin A, Salvinorin B, drug discrimination, rats

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Research regarding the psychopharmacology of salvinorin A, the main psychoactive ingredient in the hallucinogenic plant Salvia divinorum, has been motivated largely by a recent increase in its recreational use and widespread media attention focused on this plant and its extracts. In addition, there is considerable evidence that drugs acting on kappa opioid receptors (KOR) may have therapeutic potential in the treatment of some neuropsychiatric conditions, including drug dependence and mood disorders. Although the neuropharmacological actions of salvinorin A are well established, only a few studies have explored the behavioral effects of this substance in comparison to the KOR agonist, U-69-593. Salvinorin A appears to have a shorter duration of action in vivo than salvinorin B analogues (Wang, Chen, Xu, Lee, Ma, Rawls, Cowan and Liu-Chen, 2008). The aim of current studywas to assess the discriminative effects of salvinorin A and two synthetic salvinorin B derivatives, the methoxymethyl (MOM) and ethoxymethyl (EOM) ethers in rats trained to discriminate U69,593. Eight male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained to discriminate U69,593 (0.32 mg/kg, S.C. 30 min) from vehicle in an operant task under a fixed-ratio (FR) 20 schedule of food reinforcement and stimulus generalization tests were conducted with U69,593 (0.02- 0.32 mg/kg), salvinorin A (0.06-1.0 mg/kg, LP.), salvinorin B MOM (0.01-0.6 mg/kg), and salvinorin B EOM (0.005-0.3 mg/kg). Time course tests (30 to 240 min) were also conducted with the highest dose of each test compound.

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