David L. Wolgin
Professor and Chair
Ph.D. Rutgers University '73
Research Area: Behavioral Neuroscience
Contact Information:
Office: 101B Behavioral Science
Telephone: (561) 297-3366
Fax: (561) 297-2160
E-mail: wolgindl@fau.edu
General Research Interests
Chronic use of psychostimulants like amphetamine and cocaine induces behavioral and neural adaptations resulting in either tolerance or sensitization. My students and I are interested in how behavioral and pharmacological variables interact to produce these phenomena. For example, both the acquisition and loss of tolerance to the "anorexic" effect of amphetamine is contingent on behavioral experience. To understand the mechanism of this effect, we used intraoral delivery of a milk solution to dissociate the consummatory phase of feeding from the appetitive phase. This behavioral analysis revealed that amphetamine suppresses food intake by inducing stereotyped movements that are incompatible with feeding, not by suppressing appetite, as is commonly thought. By making intraoral infusions of milk contingent on maintaining a stationary head posture, we demonstrated that rats can learn to inhibit stereotyped movements in order to feed. Therefore, tolerance is mediated by a learned behavioral adaptation to the pharmacological effects of the drug. Our current research has two objectives: (1) To better understand the behavioral variables that control the development and loss of tolerance and (2) to discover the neural basis of the learned suppression of stereotyped movements, which mediates tolerance.
Representative Publications
Hughes, K.M. & Wolgin, D.L. (2002). Changes in behavioral contingencies produce a loss of tolerance to
amphetamine hypophagia in rats despite continued tests while drugged. Behavioural Pharmacology,
13, 279-286.
Wolgin, D.L. & Jakubow, J.J. (2003). Tolerance to amphetamine hypophagia: A microstructural analysis of
licking behavior in the rat. Behavioral Neuroscience, 117, 95-104.
Wolgin, D.L. & Jakubow, J.J. (2004). Tolerance to amphetamine hypophagia: A real-time depiction of learning
to suppress stereotyped movements in the rat. Behavioral Neuroscience, 118, 470-478.
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