---
affiliation:
- id: 0
  organization: Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, Faculty of
    Medicine, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
article:
  elocation-id: reproduced-rat-park
  volume: 1
author:
- Shaun Yon-Seng Khoo
bibliography: /tmp/tmp-60a807itlcAhFi.json
copyright:
  link: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
  text: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
    License
  type: CC-BY-NC
csl: /app/dist/server/server/utils/citations/citeStyles/elife.csl
date:
  day: 13
  month: 08
  year: 2020
journal:
  eissn: 2670-3815
  publisher-name: Publishers of Trial and Error
  title: Journal for Reproducibility in Neuroscience
link-citations: true
title: Have we reproduced Rat Park? Conceptual but not direct
  replication of the protective effects of social and environmental
  enrichment in addiction
uri: "https://jrn.trialanderror.org/pub/reproduced-rat-park"
---

# **Abstract**

The Rat Park studies are classic experiments in addiction neuroscience,
yet they have not been successfully replicated directly and several
serious methodological criticisms have been raised. However, the
conceptual reproducibility of the Rat Park studies is supported by both
contemporaneous and subsequent research. Contemporaneous research on
social and environmental enrichment frequently found social isolation
rendered rats less sensitive to the effects of drugs of abuse. The Rat
Park studies therefore confirmed the importance of social and
environmental enrichment and extended this literature to suggest that
enrichment reduced opioid consumption. Subsequent studies have also
demonstrated social and environmental enrichment reduces drug
consumption. However, there are also several papers reporting no effects
of enrichment (or 'negative' results) and caveats from studies that show
genes, age, sex and drug of abuse are all important parameters. While
the Rat Park studies did not use methods that are reliable by current
standards, enrichment has been shown to reliably reduce opioid
consumption and this effect can generalise to other drugs of abuse.

**Keywords: ***Rat Park, Addiction, Environment, Social, Enrichment,
Housing*

![](https://assets.pubpub.org/zqt0ujuz/image-61691161317092.png){#nsl5ae8ux36}

![](https://assets.pubpub.org/pzrlppew/image-71691160815460.png){#nrbree3j3bo}

# Reviewer's Comments

\[file element\]

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