Featured Paper of the Month

Featured Paper of the Month – September 2016
Published in Elife by Sadacca, Brian F; Jones, Joshua L; Schoenbaum, Geoffrey

Midbrain dopamine neurons have been proposed to signal reward prediction errors as defined in temporal difference (TD) learning algorithms. While these models have been extremely powerful in interpreting dopamine activity, they typically do not use value derived through inference in computing errors…

Featured Paper of the Month – August 2016
Published in The Journal of Neuroscience by Marchant, Nathan J; Campbell, Erin J; Whitaker, Leslie R; Harvey, Brandon K; Kaganovsky, Konstantin; Adhikary, Sweta; Hope, Bruce T; Heins, Robert C; Prisinzano, Thomas E; Vardy, Eyal; Bonci, Antonello; Bossert, Jennifer M; Shaham, Yavin

In many human alcoholics, abstinence is self-imposed because of the negative consequences of excessive alcohol use, and relapse is often triggered by exposure to environmental contexts associated with prior alcohol drinking…

Featured Paper of the Month – July 2016
Published in Natural Neuroscience by Zhang, Wen; Zhang, Lifeng; Liang, Bo; Schroeder, David; Zhang, Zhong-Wei; Cox, Gregory A; Li, Yun; Lin, Da-Ting

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are overlapping neurodegenerative disorders whose pathogenesis remains largely unknown. Using TDP-43(A315T) mice, an ALS and FTD model with marked cortical pathology, we found that hyperactive somatostatin interneurons disinhibited layer 5 pyramidal neurons (L5-PNs) and contributed to their excitotoxicity…

Featured Paper of the Month – June 2016
Published in The Journal of Neuroscience by Quiroz, Cesar; Orru, Marco; Rea, William; Ciudad-Roberts, Andres; Yepes, Gabriel; Britt, Jonathan P; Ferre, Sergi

It is generally assumed that infralimbic cortex (ILC) and prelimbic cortex, two adjacent areas of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in rodents, provide selective excitatory glutamatergic inputs to the nucleus accumbens (NAc) shell and core, respectively…

Featured Paper of the Month – May 2016
Published in Neuron by Takahashi, Yuji K; Chang, Chun Yun; Lucantonio, Federica; Haney, Richard Z; Berg, Benjamin A; Yau, Hau-Jie; Bonci, Antonello; Schoenbaum, Geoffrey

Imagination, defined as the ability to interpret reality in ways that diverge from past experience, is fundamental to adaptive behavior. This can be seen at a simple level in our capacity to predict novel outcomes in new situations. The ability to anticipate outcomes never before received can also influence learning if those imagined outcomes are not received…

Featured Paper of the Month – April 2016
Published in Biological Psychiatry by Justinova, Zuzana; Panlilio, Leigh V; Secci, Maria E; Redhi, Godfrey H; Schindler, Charles W; Cross, Alan J; Mrzljak, Ladislav; Medd, Amy; Shaham, Yavin; Goldberg, Steven R

Based on rodent studies, group II metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR2 and mGluR3) were suggested as targets for addiction treatment. However, LY379268 and other group II agonists do not discriminate between the mainly presynaptic inhibitory mGluR2 (the proposed treatment target) and mGluR3. These agonists also produce tolerance over repeated administration and are no longer considered for addiction treatment…

Featured Paper of the Month – March 2016
Published in Biological Psychiatry by Caprioli, Daniele; Venniro, Marco; Zeric, Tamara; Li, Xuan; Adhikary, Sweta; Madangopal, Rajtarun; Marchant, Nathan J; Lucantonio, Federica; Schoenbaum, Geoffrey; Bossert, Jennifer M; Shaham, Yavin

Cue-induced methamphetamine craving increases after prolonged forced (experimenter-imposed) abstinence from the drug (incubation of methamphetamine craving). Here, we determined whether this incubation phenomenon would occur under conditions that promote voluntary (self-imposed) abstinence…

Featured Paper of the Month – February 2016
Published in Cell Reports by Wang, Huikun; Treadway, Tyler; Covey, Daniel P; Cheer, Joseph F; Lupica, Carl R

Cocaine is a highly addictive drug that acts upon the brain’s reward circuitry via the inhibition of monoamine uptake. Endogenous cannabinoids (eCB) are lipid molecules released from midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons that modulate cocaine’s effects through poorly understood mechanisms…

Featured Paper of the Month – January 2016
Published in The Journal of Medical Chemistry by Boateng, Comfort A; Bakare, Oluyomi M; Zhan, Jia; Banala, Ashwini K; Burzynski, Caitlin; Pommier, Elie; Keck, Thomas M; Donthamsetti, Prashant; Javitch, Jonathan A; Rais, Rana; Slusher, Barbara S; Xi, Zheng-Xiong; Newman, Amy Hauck

The dopamine D3 receptor (D3R) is a promising target for the development of pharmacotherapeutics to treat substance use disorders. Several D3R-selective antagonists are effective in animal models of drug abuse, especially in models of relapse. Nevertheless, poor bioavailability, metabolic instability, and/or predicted toxicity have impeded success in translating these drug candidates to clinical use…

Featured Paper of the Month – December 2015
Published in The Journal of Medical Chemistry by Selfridge, Brandon R; Wang, Xiaohui; Zhang, Yingning; Yin, Hang; Grace, Peter M; Watkins, Linda R; Jacobson, Arthur E; Rice, Kenner C

Activation of Toll-like receptors has been linked to neuropathic pain and opioid dependence. (+)-Naltrexone acts as a Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) antagonist and has been shown to reverse neuropathic pain in rat studies. We designed and synthesized compounds based on (+)-naltrexone and (+)-noroxymorphone and evaluated their TLR4 antagonist activities by their effects on inhibiting lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced TLR4 downstream nitric oxide (NO) production in microglia BV-2 cells…