Environmental Enrichment Can Reduce Cocaine Use, Researchers Find

ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2008) — Simple environmental enrichment and increased social stress can both affect the level of individual drug use, according to new monkey research at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Previous research has shown that social rank -- whether animals are dominant or subordinate within their social groups -- can affect the amount of cocaine that monkeys will self-administer. Housed in groups of four, male cynomolgus monkeys will invariably stratify by social rank from the most dominant to the most subordinate.

Once exposed to cocaine and taught to self-administer the drug, the more subordinate animals are far more inclined to engage in the human equivalent of serious drug abuse than are the dominant animals. Research has shown differences in certain neurochemicals in the brains of the animals, both as predictors and results of the social ranking, and therefore as predictors of drug abuse.

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