Sheila Specker | University of Minnesota (original) (raw)

Papers by Sheila Specker

This is an open access article. Unrestricted non-commercial use is permitted provided the origina... more This is an open access article. Unrestricted non-commercial use is permitted provided the original work is properly cited. Open Access Full open access to this and thousands of other papers at

Ministry with Persons with Mental Illness and Their Families, 2012

Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, 2020

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Decision-making impairments in addiction can arise from dysfunction in distinct... more OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Decision-making impairments in addiction can arise from dysfunction in distinct neural circuits. Such processes can be dissociated by measuring complex, computationally distinct behaviors within an economic framework. We aim to characterize computational changes conserved across models of addiction. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We used neuroeconomic tasks capable of dissociating neurally separable decision processes using behavioral analyses equally applicable to humans and rodents. We tested 12 human cocaine-users and 9 healthy controls on the Web-Surf task designed to match the rodent Restaurant Row task on which 27 mice were trained and then exposed to saline (n = 10), cocaine (n = 7), or morphine (n = 10). All subjects foraged for rewards (humans: entertaining videos; mice: food) of varying costs (1-30s delays) and subjective value (humans: genres; mice: flavors) by making serial accept or reject decisions while on a limited time budget, balancing the utility of w...

Biological Psychiatry, 2020

Substance Abuse: Research and Treatment, 2009

Background A substantial number of patients in general hospitals will evince substance abuse prob... more Background A substantial number of patients in general hospitals will evince substance abuse problems but a majority is unlikely to be adequately identified in the referral-consultation process. This failure may preclude patients from receiving effective interventions for substance use disorders. Objectives 1. To evaluate all referred patients for possible substance use disorders. 2. To ascertain the degree of convergence between patients referred for chemical problems and the corresponding DSM diagnosis. 3. To compare demographic data for substance abusing patients and referrals not so classified. 4. To evaluate conditions concomitant with substance use disorders. Method Consecutive one-year referrals (524) to consultation-liaison psychiatric services were scrutinized for chemically-related problems by psychiatric consultants. Results Of the referrals, 176 met criteria for substance use disorders (SUD) (57% alcohol; 25% other drugs; 18% both alcohol and other drugs). Persons diagno...

International journal of psychiatry in clinical practice, Jan 20, 2017

To investigate the concurrent and criterion validity of two independently developed measurement i... more To investigate the concurrent and criterion validity of two independently developed measurement instruments, INTERMED and LOCUS, designed to improve the treatment and clinical management of patients with complex symptom manifestations. Participants (N = 66) were selected from hospital records based on the complexity of presenting symptoms, with tripartite diagnoses across biological, psychiatric and addiction domains. Biopsychosocial information from hospital records were submitted to INTERMED and LOCUS grids. In addition, Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) ratings were gathered for statistical analyses. The product moment correlation between INTERMED and LOCUS was 0.609 (p = .01). Inverse zero-order correlations for INTERMED and LOCUS total score and GAF were obtained. However, only the beta weight for LOCUS and GAF was significant. An exploratory principal components analysis further illuminated areas of convergence between the instruments. INTERMED and LOCUS demonstrated shar...

The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry

ABSTRACT

The Journal of Physical Chemistry, 1977

Communications to the Editor we find Cpo(H+) still large and positive. This situation implies tha... more Communications to the Editor we find Cpo(H+) still large and positive. This situation implies that Cpo of common cations and anions are vastly different; for example, Cpo of alkali and halide ions would be of opposite signs. From the preliminary results, the approach followed here suffers no obvious inconsistency and appears promising in supplying independent estimates of ionic partial molar volumes and heat capacities. The hypothesis is being further investigated with other analogous pairs of ionic and neutral compounds, with particular attention to two limiting aspects. In a first part, we should elucidate how the residual charge on the-ROH substituent of the cation will affect the derived ionic values. On the other hand, since it is known that V" of quaternary ions depends on the nature of the central atoms (differences in bond len@hs13), we should establish the dependence of the ionic scales on this parameter. Acknowledgment. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the National Research Council of Canada through an operation grant and a scholarship to one of us (J.C.M.).

International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1995

Eighty-three obese subjects with binge eating disorder (BED) were compared with 99 obese subjects... more Eighty-three obese subjects with binge eating disorder (BED) were compared with 99 obese subjects not meeting criteria for BED on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS). Overall, the subjects in our sample were not significantly alexithymic, the mean global TAS score being 62.8 (SD = 10.2) which is comparable with the values found in non-patient control samples. Furthermore, the mean TAS scores did not differ between obese subjects with and without BED. However, we found a slightly higher prevalence of alexithymia (TAS total score 74 and above) in BED subjects compared with non-BED subjects (24.1% and 11.1%, respectively). A series of stepwise multiple regression analyses were run, exhibiting a significant relationship between the TAS and educational level and the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) subscales Interpersonal Distrust and Ineffectiveness. Age, body mass index, measures of depression, and eating pathology did not predict TAS scores.

International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1993

The treatment literature on bulimia nervosa includes several double-blind placebo controlled stud... more The treatment literature on bulimia nervosa includes several double-blind placebo controlled studies, the majority of which examine the use of antidepressants in bulimia nervosa. The psychotherapy literature has focused heavily on the use of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in the treatment of this eating disorder. Some studies have compared CBT to other types of therapy or waiting list controls. The following review will examine the methodology and outcome of the pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy treatment studies of bulimia nervosa. The authors conclude that while the studies indicate treatment is somewhat effective, there remains uncertainty regarding the long-term effectiveness of most of the reported treatments.

JAMA psychiatry, Jan 18, 2015

Adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is prevalent but often unrecognized, in par... more Adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is prevalent but often unrecognized, in part because it tends to co-occur with other disorders such as substance use disorders. Cocaine use disorder is one such disorder with high co-occurrence of ADHD. To examine whether treatment of co-occurring ADHD and cocaine use disorder with extended-release mixed amphetamine salts is effective at both improving ADHD symptoms and reducing cocaine use. Thirteen-week, randomized, double-blind, 3-arm, placebo-controlled trial of participants meeting DSM-IV-TR criteria for both ADHD and cocaine use disorder conducted between December 1, 2007, and April 15, 2013, at 2 academic health center substance abuse treatment research sites. One hundred twenty-six adults diagnosed as having comorbid ADHD and cocaine use disorder were randomized to extended-release mixed amphetamine salts or placebo. Analysis was by intent-to-treat population. Participants received extended-release mixed amphetamine salts...

Annals of clinical psychiatry : official journal of the American Academy of Clinical Psychiatrists, 2015

The financial and treatment challenges of complex patients must be addressed with adequate assess... more The financial and treatment challenges of complex patients must be addressed with adequate assessment and evaluation. The INTERMED complexity instrument (INTERMED) has been developed for this purpose, but to date has not been used retrospectively. The current study represents a retrospective validity investigation of INTERMED with patients with substance use disorder comorbid with other psychiatric and medical conditions (triple diagnoses). Such patients were expected to generate high complexity scores on the INTERMED instrument. Information on 66 patients with triple diagnoses was submitted to the INTERMED complexity grid. These data were subjected to cluster analysis and other analytic procedures. Total INTERMED scores reflected elevated complexity for patients with triple diagnoses. As a group, they represented a single cluster of complex patients. The validity of the INTERMED complexity assessment was corroborated in relation to retrospective data. In addition to elevations in t...

The Journal of clinical psychiatry, 1994

Compulsive buying is infrequently described in the psychiatric literature despite suggestions tha... more Compulsive buying is infrequently described in the psychiatric literature despite suggestions that it may be prevalent. The authors investigated the demographics and phenomenology of this syndrome and assessed psychiatric comorbidity via interviews of both compulsive buyers and normal buyers. Twenty-four compulsive buyers were compared with 24 age- and sex-matched normal buyers using (1) a semistructured interview for compulsive buying and impulse control disorders, (2) a modified version of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R, and (3) scales measuring compulsiveness, depression, and anxiety. The typical compulsive buyer was a 36-year-old female who had developed compulsive buying at age 17 1/2 and whose buying had resulted in adverse psychosocial consequences. Purchases were usually of clothes, shoes, jewelry, or makeup, which frequently went unused. Compared with normal buyers, compulsive buyers had a higher lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorders, substance use disor...

Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2015

International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1993

We assessed the correlation between a self-report questionnaire and an expert-rating including an... more We assessed the correlation between a self-report questionnaire and an expert-rating including an initial interview and a longitudinal evaluation on the diagnosis of binge eating disorder (BED) in a sample of 100 obese women participating in a treatment program for weight reduction. The level of diagnostic agreement between patient-rating and expert-rating with regard to the presence or absence of BED was modest, with a kappa value of .57. According to Shrout, Spitzer, and Fleiss (Archives of General Psychiatry, 44, 172-177, 1987) this represents fair to good agreement beyond chance. The self-report instrument did not produce higher estimates of the frequency of BED in this selected sample of treatment seekers than the expert-rating, as observed in studies on the epidemiology of bulimia nervosa in community samples. The questionnaire identified 40 cases of BED, the expert-rating 43 cases. The results indicate that the disagreement between self-report and interview was mainly due to discordances in three of the diagnostic criteria of BED--namely loss of control, marked distress regarding binge eating, and the frequency requirement of two binge eating episodes per week for a 6-month period. Inconsistencies between subjects and clinicians with regard to the definition of an overeating episode and with regard to the behavioral indicators of loss of control did not lead to differences between self-report and observer-rating in the final diagnosis of BED.

Psychopharmacology, 1998

The objectives of the current study were to determine 1) the effects of various doses of dynorphi... more The objectives of the current study were to determine 1) the effects of various doses of dynorphin A (1-13) on opiate withdrawal in humans and 2) the safety of dynorphin at these doses. Opiate dependent subjects who had been stabilized on morphine received a single IV dose of placebo, 150, 500 or 1000 microg/kg dynorphin after exhibiting spontaneous withdrawal using a randomized, double-blinded, between-subjects study design. Observer Withdrawal Scores were lower in the 150 and 1000 microg/kg groups as compared to placebo (P < 0.05) but no significant differences were observed on the observer-rated Wang or Sickness Scales. Significant decreases were also found for self-reported symptoms of nervousness, runny nose, sneezing, and painful joints in the 500 microg/kg group. Significant increases in serum prolactin levels were seen after all dynorphin doses; however, these were not dose-related. Dynorphin A (1-13) was well tolerated and safe, with no changes in physiologic parameters. We conclude that dynorphin A (1-13) has a modest effect in reducing mild opiate withdrawal in humans and is well tolerated at doses up to 1000 microg/kg.

Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 1994

In this two-part study, an animal model of binge eating was first produced, then the rate of acqu... more In this two-part study, an animal model of binge eating was first produced, then the rate of acquisition of cocaine self-administration was assessed. Initially, 16 female weanling rats were food deprived (DEPR) at 25, 95, and 143 days of age. Another group of 16 age-matched controls was allowed ad lib access to food. Each time the DEPR group was food deprived, they were allowed to recover to normal weight. They were then injected with butorphanol tartrate (BUTR), an opioid that stimulates feeding, and food intake was measured for 4 h. All rats given BUTR consumed significantly more food than those given saline. Animals with DEPR history consumed food over a longer period of time, and at h 4 after BUTR injection, they consumed significantly more food than controls. In the second part of the experiment, an autoshaping procedure was used to quantitatively evaluate the rate of acquisition of cocaine self-administration. By day 30, 86670 of the DEPR and 69070 of the control groups had acquired cocaine self-administration. Animal model Autoshaping Binge eating Butorphanol tartrate Cocaine Intravenous Rats Self-administration Food deprivation history

Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 2013

Paroxetine alone is not sufficient to decrease alcohol use in socially anxious alcoholics seeking... more Paroxetine alone is not sufficient to decrease alcohol use in socially anxious alcoholics seeking anxiety treatment. We tested the hypothesis that adding a brief-alcohol-intervention (BI) to paroxetine would decrease alcohol use. All subjects (N = 83) had a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder, endorsed drinking to cope with anxiety, were NIAAA-defined at-risk drinkers, and were randomized to either paroxetine alone, or paroxetine plus BI. Both groups showed significant improvement in both social anxiety severity (F(5,83) = 61.5, p < 0.0001) and drinking to cope (e.g. F(4,79) = 23, p < 0.0001) and these two constructs correlated with each other (B = 3.39, SE = 0.696, t(71) = 4.88, p < 0.001). BI was not effective at decreasing alcohol use (e.g. no main effect of group, all p values >0.3). Paroxetine decreased social anxiety severity in the face of heavy drinking and decreasing the anxiety was related to a concurrent decrease in coping related drinking. BI was not effective at decreasing drinking or drinking to cope.

This is an open access article. Unrestricted non-commercial use is permitted provided the origina... more This is an open access article. Unrestricted non-commercial use is permitted provided the original work is properly cited. Open Access Full open access to this and thousands of other papers at

Ministry with Persons with Mental Illness and Their Families, 2012

Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, 2020

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Decision-making impairments in addiction can arise from dysfunction in distinct... more OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Decision-making impairments in addiction can arise from dysfunction in distinct neural circuits. Such processes can be dissociated by measuring complex, computationally distinct behaviors within an economic framework. We aim to characterize computational changes conserved across models of addiction. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We used neuroeconomic tasks capable of dissociating neurally separable decision processes using behavioral analyses equally applicable to humans and rodents. We tested 12 human cocaine-users and 9 healthy controls on the Web-Surf task designed to match the rodent Restaurant Row task on which 27 mice were trained and then exposed to saline (n = 10), cocaine (n = 7), or morphine (n = 10). All subjects foraged for rewards (humans: entertaining videos; mice: food) of varying costs (1-30s delays) and subjective value (humans: genres; mice: flavors) by making serial accept or reject decisions while on a limited time budget, balancing the utility of w...

Biological Psychiatry, 2020

Substance Abuse: Research and Treatment, 2009

Background A substantial number of patients in general hospitals will evince substance abuse prob... more Background A substantial number of patients in general hospitals will evince substance abuse problems but a majority is unlikely to be adequately identified in the referral-consultation process. This failure may preclude patients from receiving effective interventions for substance use disorders. Objectives 1. To evaluate all referred patients for possible substance use disorders. 2. To ascertain the degree of convergence between patients referred for chemical problems and the corresponding DSM diagnosis. 3. To compare demographic data for substance abusing patients and referrals not so classified. 4. To evaluate conditions concomitant with substance use disorders. Method Consecutive one-year referrals (524) to consultation-liaison psychiatric services were scrutinized for chemically-related problems by psychiatric consultants. Results Of the referrals, 176 met criteria for substance use disorders (SUD) (57% alcohol; 25% other drugs; 18% both alcohol and other drugs). Persons diagno...

International journal of psychiatry in clinical practice, Jan 20, 2017

To investigate the concurrent and criterion validity of two independently developed measurement i... more To investigate the concurrent and criterion validity of two independently developed measurement instruments, INTERMED and LOCUS, designed to improve the treatment and clinical management of patients with complex symptom manifestations. Participants (N = 66) were selected from hospital records based on the complexity of presenting symptoms, with tripartite diagnoses across biological, psychiatric and addiction domains. Biopsychosocial information from hospital records were submitted to INTERMED and LOCUS grids. In addition, Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) ratings were gathered for statistical analyses. The product moment correlation between INTERMED and LOCUS was 0.609 (p = .01). Inverse zero-order correlations for INTERMED and LOCUS total score and GAF were obtained. However, only the beta weight for LOCUS and GAF was significant. An exploratory principal components analysis further illuminated areas of convergence between the instruments. INTERMED and LOCUS demonstrated shar...

The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry

ABSTRACT

The Journal of Physical Chemistry, 1977

Communications to the Editor we find Cpo(H+) still large and positive. This situation implies tha... more Communications to the Editor we find Cpo(H+) still large and positive. This situation implies that Cpo of common cations and anions are vastly different; for example, Cpo of alkali and halide ions would be of opposite signs. From the preliminary results, the approach followed here suffers no obvious inconsistency and appears promising in supplying independent estimates of ionic partial molar volumes and heat capacities. The hypothesis is being further investigated with other analogous pairs of ionic and neutral compounds, with particular attention to two limiting aspects. In a first part, we should elucidate how the residual charge on the-ROH substituent of the cation will affect the derived ionic values. On the other hand, since it is known that V" of quaternary ions depends on the nature of the central atoms (differences in bond len@hs13), we should establish the dependence of the ionic scales on this parameter. Acknowledgment. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the National Research Council of Canada through an operation grant and a scholarship to one of us (J.C.M.).

International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1995

Eighty-three obese subjects with binge eating disorder (BED) were compared with 99 obese subjects... more Eighty-three obese subjects with binge eating disorder (BED) were compared with 99 obese subjects not meeting criteria for BED on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS). Overall, the subjects in our sample were not significantly alexithymic, the mean global TAS score being 62.8 (SD = 10.2) which is comparable with the values found in non-patient control samples. Furthermore, the mean TAS scores did not differ between obese subjects with and without BED. However, we found a slightly higher prevalence of alexithymia (TAS total score 74 and above) in BED subjects compared with non-BED subjects (24.1% and 11.1%, respectively). A series of stepwise multiple regression analyses were run, exhibiting a significant relationship between the TAS and educational level and the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) subscales Interpersonal Distrust and Ineffectiveness. Age, body mass index, measures of depression, and eating pathology did not predict TAS scores.

International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1993

The treatment literature on bulimia nervosa includes several double-blind placebo controlled stud... more The treatment literature on bulimia nervosa includes several double-blind placebo controlled studies, the majority of which examine the use of antidepressants in bulimia nervosa. The psychotherapy literature has focused heavily on the use of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in the treatment of this eating disorder. Some studies have compared CBT to other types of therapy or waiting list controls. The following review will examine the methodology and outcome of the pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy treatment studies of bulimia nervosa. The authors conclude that while the studies indicate treatment is somewhat effective, there remains uncertainty regarding the long-term effectiveness of most of the reported treatments.

JAMA psychiatry, Jan 18, 2015

Adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is prevalent but often unrecognized, in par... more Adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is prevalent but often unrecognized, in part because it tends to co-occur with other disorders such as substance use disorders. Cocaine use disorder is one such disorder with high co-occurrence of ADHD. To examine whether treatment of co-occurring ADHD and cocaine use disorder with extended-release mixed amphetamine salts is effective at both improving ADHD symptoms and reducing cocaine use. Thirteen-week, randomized, double-blind, 3-arm, placebo-controlled trial of participants meeting DSM-IV-TR criteria for both ADHD and cocaine use disorder conducted between December 1, 2007, and April 15, 2013, at 2 academic health center substance abuse treatment research sites. One hundred twenty-six adults diagnosed as having comorbid ADHD and cocaine use disorder were randomized to extended-release mixed amphetamine salts or placebo. Analysis was by intent-to-treat population. Participants received extended-release mixed amphetamine salts...

Annals of clinical psychiatry : official journal of the American Academy of Clinical Psychiatrists, 2015

The financial and treatment challenges of complex patients must be addressed with adequate assess... more The financial and treatment challenges of complex patients must be addressed with adequate assessment and evaluation. The INTERMED complexity instrument (INTERMED) has been developed for this purpose, but to date has not been used retrospectively. The current study represents a retrospective validity investigation of INTERMED with patients with substance use disorder comorbid with other psychiatric and medical conditions (triple diagnoses). Such patients were expected to generate high complexity scores on the INTERMED instrument. Information on 66 patients with triple diagnoses was submitted to the INTERMED complexity grid. These data were subjected to cluster analysis and other analytic procedures. Total INTERMED scores reflected elevated complexity for patients with triple diagnoses. As a group, they represented a single cluster of complex patients. The validity of the INTERMED complexity assessment was corroborated in relation to retrospective data. In addition to elevations in t...

The Journal of clinical psychiatry, 1994

Compulsive buying is infrequently described in the psychiatric literature despite suggestions tha... more Compulsive buying is infrequently described in the psychiatric literature despite suggestions that it may be prevalent. The authors investigated the demographics and phenomenology of this syndrome and assessed psychiatric comorbidity via interviews of both compulsive buyers and normal buyers. Twenty-four compulsive buyers were compared with 24 age- and sex-matched normal buyers using (1) a semistructured interview for compulsive buying and impulse control disorders, (2) a modified version of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R, and (3) scales measuring compulsiveness, depression, and anxiety. The typical compulsive buyer was a 36-year-old female who had developed compulsive buying at age 17 1/2 and whose buying had resulted in adverse psychosocial consequences. Purchases were usually of clothes, shoes, jewelry, or makeup, which frequently went unused. Compared with normal buyers, compulsive buyers had a higher lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorders, substance use disor...

Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2015

International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1993

We assessed the correlation between a self-report questionnaire and an expert-rating including an... more We assessed the correlation between a self-report questionnaire and an expert-rating including an initial interview and a longitudinal evaluation on the diagnosis of binge eating disorder (BED) in a sample of 100 obese women participating in a treatment program for weight reduction. The level of diagnostic agreement between patient-rating and expert-rating with regard to the presence or absence of BED was modest, with a kappa value of .57. According to Shrout, Spitzer, and Fleiss (Archives of General Psychiatry, 44, 172-177, 1987) this represents fair to good agreement beyond chance. The self-report instrument did not produce higher estimates of the frequency of BED in this selected sample of treatment seekers than the expert-rating, as observed in studies on the epidemiology of bulimia nervosa in community samples. The questionnaire identified 40 cases of BED, the expert-rating 43 cases. The results indicate that the disagreement between self-report and interview was mainly due to discordances in three of the diagnostic criteria of BED--namely loss of control, marked distress regarding binge eating, and the frequency requirement of two binge eating episodes per week for a 6-month period. Inconsistencies between subjects and clinicians with regard to the definition of an overeating episode and with regard to the behavioral indicators of loss of control did not lead to differences between self-report and observer-rating in the final diagnosis of BED.

Psychopharmacology, 1998

The objectives of the current study were to determine 1) the effects of various doses of dynorphi... more The objectives of the current study were to determine 1) the effects of various doses of dynorphin A (1-13) on opiate withdrawal in humans and 2) the safety of dynorphin at these doses. Opiate dependent subjects who had been stabilized on morphine received a single IV dose of placebo, 150, 500 or 1000 microg/kg dynorphin after exhibiting spontaneous withdrawal using a randomized, double-blinded, between-subjects study design. Observer Withdrawal Scores were lower in the 150 and 1000 microg/kg groups as compared to placebo (P &lt; 0.05) but no significant differences were observed on the observer-rated Wang or Sickness Scales. Significant decreases were also found for self-reported symptoms of nervousness, runny nose, sneezing, and painful joints in the 500 microg/kg group. Significant increases in serum prolactin levels were seen after all dynorphin doses; however, these were not dose-related. Dynorphin A (1-13) was well tolerated and safe, with no changes in physiologic parameters. We conclude that dynorphin A (1-13) has a modest effect in reducing mild opiate withdrawal in humans and is well tolerated at doses up to 1000 microg/kg.

Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 1994

In this two-part study, an animal model of binge eating was first produced, then the rate of acqu... more In this two-part study, an animal model of binge eating was first produced, then the rate of acquisition of cocaine self-administration was assessed. Initially, 16 female weanling rats were food deprived (DEPR) at 25, 95, and 143 days of age. Another group of 16 age-matched controls was allowed ad lib access to food. Each time the DEPR group was food deprived, they were allowed to recover to normal weight. They were then injected with butorphanol tartrate (BUTR), an opioid that stimulates feeding, and food intake was measured for 4 h. All rats given BUTR consumed significantly more food than those given saline. Animals with DEPR history consumed food over a longer period of time, and at h 4 after BUTR injection, they consumed significantly more food than controls. In the second part of the experiment, an autoshaping procedure was used to quantitatively evaluate the rate of acquisition of cocaine self-administration. By day 30, 86670 of the DEPR and 69070 of the control groups had acquired cocaine self-administration. Animal model Autoshaping Binge eating Butorphanol tartrate Cocaine Intravenous Rats Self-administration Food deprivation history

Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 2013

Paroxetine alone is not sufficient to decrease alcohol use in socially anxious alcoholics seeking... more Paroxetine alone is not sufficient to decrease alcohol use in socially anxious alcoholics seeking anxiety treatment. We tested the hypothesis that adding a brief-alcohol-intervention (BI) to paroxetine would decrease alcohol use. All subjects (N = 83) had a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder, endorsed drinking to cope with anxiety, were NIAAA-defined at-risk drinkers, and were randomized to either paroxetine alone, or paroxetine plus BI. Both groups showed significant improvement in both social anxiety severity (F(5,83) = 61.5, p < 0.0001) and drinking to cope (e.g. F(4,79) = 23, p < 0.0001) and these two constructs correlated with each other (B = 3.39, SE = 0.696, t(71) = 4.88, p < 0.001). BI was not effective at decreasing alcohol use (e.g. no main effect of group, all p values >0.3). Paroxetine decreased social anxiety severity in the face of heavy drinking and decreasing the anxiety was related to a concurrent decrease in coping related drinking. BI was not effective at decreasing drinking or drinking to cope.