Drug abuse is an expensive and destructive threat to public health. People who experience environmental stress or live in conditions of poverty are generally more vulnerable to abusing drugs. Similar factors also promote drug-seeking behavior in animal models. “We know that mice living in deprived conditions show higher levels of drug-seeking behavior than those living in stimulating environments,” said Josiah Boivin (University of California, San Francisco) in a recent press release.

The ability to control one's environment can counteract this vulnerability, buffering the effects of deprivation and potentially reducing unhealthy responses to drugs of abuse. Cognitive training with active learning is one way to provide a sense of control that could promote resilience to drug abuse. Together with Linda Wilbrecht (University of California, Berkeley) and Denise Piscopo (University of Oregon, Eugene), Boivin carried out a study to test this possibility in mice, finding that exposure to a stimulating learning environment lessened drug-seeking behavior.

The study involved three groups of mice. The first group underwent a 9-day cognitive learning program in which they were trained to locate and retrieve a food reward within an arena that was enriched with sensory stimuli. Each mouse in the second group was 'yoked' to a mouse in the first group: placed in an identical, adjacent arena and given the same food reward each time its trained partner earned a food reward. The third group of mice remained in their home cages during the training period and did not undergo cognitive training or receive food rewards. Four weeks later, the scientists exposed all the mice to cocaine and then evaluated their drug-seeking behavior. The trained mice and the yoked mice both showed reductions in drug-seeking behavior, and the benefit was greater in trained mice than in yoked mice (Neuropharmacol. 97, 404–413; 2015). The beneficial effects of training persisted for weeks after the training period.

These findings suggest that deprivation might increase vulnerability to drug-seeking behavior and, conversely, cognitive training might boost long-term resilience to future substance abuse. Such results could have promising implications for averting drug abuse in humans, if future research shows that active learning has similar effects in people. “Our data are exciting because they suggest that positive learning experiences, through education or play in a structured environment, could sculpt and develop brain circuits to build resilience in at-risk individuals,” Wilbrecht explained in a press release.