Involvement of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 in the inhibition of methamphetamine-associated contextual memory after prolonged extinction training

Addiction is thought to be a memory process between perception and environmental cues and addicted patients often relapse when they come into contact with the drug-related context once again. Here, we used a conditioned place preference protocol to seek a more effective extinction methodology of methamphetamine (METH) memory and delineate its underlying mechanism. Conditioning METH for 3 days in mice markedly increased the time spent in the METH-paired compartment. Then the mice were conditioned with saline for 6 days, from day 6 to day 11, a procedure termed extinction training. However, METH memory returned after a priming injection of METH. We prolonged extinction duration from 6 to 10 days and found that this extensive extinction (EE) training prevented priming effect. At the molecular level, we discovered that prolonged extinction training reversed the METH-conditioned place preference-induced increase in surface expression of GluA2 and alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazole-4-propionate (AMPA)/NMDA ratio in the basolateral amygdala. In addition, we found that extinction with metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) activation had similar results to EE: reduced relapse after extinction, decreased synaptic AMPA receptors AMPARs and the AMPA/NMDA ratio. On the contrary, EE with mGluR5 inhibition suppressed the results of EE. These data indicate that EE training-elicited inhibition of METH-primed reinstatement is mediated by the mGluR5.