The inside story: Interoceptive Pavlovian conditioning with the nicotine stimulus.

Abstract

Pavlovian conditioning plays a crucial role in promoting well-being and supporting healthy behaviors but also contributes to the development of diseases and psychopathologies. Much of the basic and applied research on these conditioning processes has focused on external or exteroceptive cues (tone, spider, context, and brewery) as the conditioned stimulus (CS) or occasion setter. Considerably less empirical effort has been devoted to studying Pavlovian conditioning involving internal or interoceptive stimuli, such as indigestion, low blood sugar, back pain, or drug intoxication function as the CS or occasion setter. In this targeted review, we focus on our research on the interoceptive stimulus effects of nicotine. We summarize methods employing discriminated goal-tracking that have been refined over the years to investigate how the function of the nicotine stimulus changes with excitatory or inhibitory conditioning protocols. That research provides substantive evidence indicating that what is known about Pavlovian conditioning with exteroceptive stimuli generally holds for the nicotine stimulus-extinction, CS salience, generalization, overshadowing, blocking, conditioned inhibition, devaluation, and overexpectation. Extension of the interoceptive conditioning methodology to include intravenous nicotine as a stimulus found that the nicotine stimulus acquires additional reinforcing value when previously paired with an appetitive outcome. In closing this review, we highlight notable gaps in the literature and discuss potential directions for research and conceptual development. Ultimately, we hope to encourage others to consider the intersection of interoception and Pavlovian conditioning in their area of scientific inquiry. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).