Skip to content

Failure of ibogaine to produce phencyclidine-like discriminative stimulus effects in rats and monkeys.

H E Jones, H Li, R L Balster

Pharmacology, biochemistry, and behavior February 1, 1998 DOI: 10.1016/s0091-3057(97)00452-8 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Animal discrimination study Peer reviewed
Population Rats and rhesus monkeys
Interventions Ibogaine Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)
Dose 2.0 mg/kg PCP in rats, 0.1 mg/kg PCP in monkeys; ibogaine 5.6-17.6 mg/kg in rats, 0.5-4.0 mg/kg in monkeys
Topics Ibogaine
Citations 11
Key points Ibogaine did not substitute for PCP in either rats or rhesus monkeys trained to discriminate PCP, indicating behavioral differences between PCP and ibogaine.

Abstract

The discriminative stimulus properties of ibogaine were investigated in rats trained to discriminate phencyclidine (PCP; 2.0 mg/kg, I.P.) from saline under a two-lever fixed-ratio (FR) 32 schedule of food reinforcement. Ibogaine (5.6-17.6 mg/kg, I.P.) showed a complete lack of substitution. Ibogaine (0.5-4.0 mg/kg, I.M.) also failed to generalize in rhesus monkeys trained to discriminate PCP (0.1 mg/kg, I.M.) from sham injection. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), tested as a reference compound, produced partial substitution for PCP in rats and occasioned little responding on the PCP-associated lever in monkeys. These results demonstrate important differences between the behavioral effects of PCP and other types of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and ibogaine and do not support the hypothesis that the affinity of ibogaine for the PCP site on N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors plays a major role in its acute behavioral effects.