Date of Award

7-2019

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Psychological Science

Program

Psychological Science (MS)

First Advisor/Chairperson

Adam Prus

Abstract

This study attempted to further explore the discriminative stimulus properties of antipsychotic drugs, by establishing the typical antipsychotic drug chlorpromazine, and the atypical antipsychotic drug clozapine as discriminative stimulus in two different groups of rats. The rats trained to discriminate chlorpromazine from vehicle failed to do so reliably, however nine of ten rats trained to discriminate 1.25 mg/kg clozapine from vehicle were able to acquire the discrimination in 19.1 sessions. The clozapine cue partially generalized (63.13% drug lever responding [SEM = ± 18.91]) to the antimalarial drug methylene blue at the 7.5 mg/kg dose, but not to the antimalarial quinacrine. This study found that the antimalarial drug methylene blue may share some pharmacological similarities or subjective effects with that of clozapine, and further studies into its antipsychotic value, if any, should be explored.

Access Type

Open Access

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