The articles in this section describe studies of the effects of drugs on animals in the laboratory. These studies are important because many of our current beliefs about the nature of drug dependence involve concepts of learning and reinforcement, and many recently developed treatments are founded on these beliefs. The section contains An Overview of Drug Abuse research using animal models and detailed articles on various research concepts beings explored in this way: Conditioned Place Preference; Conditioned Withdrawal; Drug Discrimination Studies; Drug Self-Administration; Environmental Influences on Drug Effects; Learning, Conditioning, and Drug Effects—An Overview; Learning Modifies Drug Effects; Learning Modifier Drug Effects; Operant Learning Is Affected by Drugs.

See also Aggression and Drugs: Research Issues; Motivation and Incentives; and the articles in the section entitled Research.

An Overview of Drug Abuse

A great deal of biomedical research is based on the belief that...