Using rodent models to understand interactions between gambling and substance use

•Individual rats show predispositions to both gambling-like behavior and substance use.•Chronic substance use in rats can exacerbate gambling-like behavior.•Experience with gambling-like behavior can facilitate substance use.•Parkinson’s disease and its treatments can interact with gambling-like behavior. Substance use is strongly associated with gambling, but the nature of this association can be difficult to determine. Rodents offer the opportunity to test causal models of these relationships through isolation of individual variables of interest. This review describes recent research in rodents showing: a) predisposing factors for both gambling-like behavior and substance use; b) exposure to drugs of abuse increasing gambling-like behavior; c) experience with gambling-like behavior increasing substance use; and d) links between gambling-like behavior and substance use in models of Parkinson’s disease therapies. These findings reveal novel relationships between gambling and substance use, and highlight the utility of rodent models for future work in this area.