Effect of amphetamine on behavioral patterns of obsessive-compulsive and addictive gambling in a rat marble test

Abstract

A rodent marble test can be qualified as the most informative test of evaluation of obsessive-compulsive disorder as a neurobiological component of pathological gambling. Several behavioral components of obsession (obsessive and anxious ideas) and compulsions (obsessive actions) directed to anxiety reduction are modeled in this test. The effect of psychostimulant amphetamine on the rat behavior was studied in a marble test, anxiety-phobic model (scale), open field (evaluation of motor and emotional activity) and resident-intruder test (Intraspecies behavior). Amphetamine 0.5 and 1.5 mg/kg increased a number of burying bolls and elevated anxiety level in dose dependent manner. This accompanied with reduction of explorative activity, elevation of motor activity and number of individual behavioral patterns. Therefore, dopaminergic system of the brain activated with amphetamine is involved in obsessive-compulsive behavior and pathological gambling.