The Study
Incubation of Methamphetamine and Palatable Food Craving after Punishment-Induced Abstinence
This study watched rats press levers for food or drugs and saw that after they stopped getting rewards, they kept pressing the lever more after a few weeks — even though nothing happened when they pressed. But this only happened in rats, not people, so we can't say the same thing happens in humans.
Analysis score
Maximum 72 for a cohort study.
Where the score came from
Rats that learned to press a lever for food or drugs kept wanting it more after two weeks of not getting it—even if they got shocked for pressing before.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 521 / 100
Quality score
Groups of people are followed over time to see who develops an outcome. Strong for identifying risk factors and associations, but cannot prove causation as firmly as RCTs.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1Yes—this suggests that even when people quit drugs or junk food because of bad consequences, their cravings can still grow stronger over time, making relapse more likely.
- 2After 21 days without food or drugs, rats pressed the lever 2–3 times more than after just 2 days.
- 3Food-trained rats kept pressing even when shocked harder than drug-trained rats.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
Neuropsychopharmacology
Year
2014
Authors
I. Krasnova, Nathan J. Marchant, B. Ladenheim, M. McCoy, L. Panlilio, J. Bossert, Y. Shaham, J. Cadet
Related Content
Claims (6)
Rats that learn to obtain highly preferred food continue pressing a lever despite increasing electric shocks, while rats that learn to obtain methamphetamine stop sooner under the same conditions.
In rats, prolonged exposure to cues associated with rewards leads to increased craving over time, regardless of whether abstinence was caused by punishment or forced cessation.
In rats previously trained to self-administer methamphetamine, exposure to drug-related cues causes a measurable increase in reward-seeking behavior between 2 and 21 days after drug access ends, regardless of how drug use was stopped, and this increase grows over time.
In rats trained to seek palatable food, the intensity of food-seeking behavior triggered by cues increases during withdrawal if measured across different groups of rats, but does not increase if measured in the same rats before and after withdrawal.
Rats that learned to associate methamphetamine or food with punishment show less interest in cues previously linked to those rewards during extinction tests, compared to rats that did not experience punishment.
After 14 days without eating highly palatable food, cravings for that food stop because the brain's learned dopamine response to the food no longer activates.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.