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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Nov 1.
Published in final edited form as: Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2011 Apr 15;218(1):69–82. doi: 10.1007/s00213-011-2263-y

Table 1.

Glossary of terminology

Reinstatement: In the learning literature, reinstatement refers to the recovery of a learned response (e.g., lever-pressing behavior) that occurs when a subject is exposed non-contingently to the unconditioned stimulus (e.g., food) after extinction (Bouton and Swartzentruber 1991). In studies of reinstatement of drug seeking, reinstatement typically refers to the resumption of drug seeking after extinction following exposure to drugs, drug cues, or stressors (Shaham et al. 2003)
Relapse (to drug use): A term used to describe the resumption of drug-taking behavior during periods of self-imposed or forced abstinence in humans (Wikler 1973)
Stress: A complex psychological construct that, despite many years of research (Cannon 1935; Selye 1956), has yet to be adequately operationally defined (Chrousos and Gold 1992; Cohen et al. 1982). In the context of animal models of psychiatric disorders, stress can be defined broadly as forced exposure to events or conditions that are normally avoided (Piazza and Le Moal 1998). In humans, the definition may be extended to incorporate cognitive and emotional responses—for example, “stress is a condition in which the environmental demands exceed the coping abilities of the individual” (Cohen et al. 1986). In non-humans, the precipitating events or conditions can be divided into two categories (Lu et al. 2003). The first category includes environmental events such as restraint, footshock, tail pinch, and defeat, as well as pharmacological events such as administration of a normally avoided drug (e.g., yohimbine, CRF). The second category includes food deprivation, social isolation, and maternal deprivation; each of these entails the removal of an environmental condition that is important for maintaining the animal’s normal physiological and psychological steady-state conditions, a state that the subject will attempt to ameliorate by seeking food, conspecific partners, or the dam
Translational (research): According to an NIH definition, translational research refers to the process of applying ideas, insights, and discoveries generated through basic scientific inquiry to the treatment or prevention of human disease (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-05-158.html). In the context of the present review, translational research refers to the assessment of whether neuropharmacological findings from studies on stress-induced reinstatement in non-humans generalize (or translate) to the human condition as assessed in laboratory studies on stress-induced craving and stress-induced drug relapse in the drug user environment
Reverse-translational (research): There is no formal definition of this relatively novel concept in the psychiatry field (Perry et al. 2009). In the context of the present review, this concept refers to the assessment of whether neuropharmacological findings from studies on stress-induced craving in humans can provide new insight (or reverse-translated) on the mechanisms of stress-induced reinstatement of drug seeking in the non- human model
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