Featured Paper of the Month – February 2022 Published in Translational Psychiatry by Daria Piacentino and Lorenzo Leggio, et al. of the NIDA IRP Clinical Psychoneuroendocrinology and Neuropsychopharmacology Section. Summary Chronic excessive alcohol drinking causes more than 80,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. The gut microbiota, which hosts more than a trillion bacteria, is… [Read More]
Featured Paper of the Month
Synaptic Zn2+ potentiates the effects of cocaine on striatal dopamine neurotransmission and behavior
Featured Paper of the Month – January 2022 Published in Translational Psychiatry by Juan Gomez and Michael Michaelides of the NIDA IRP Biobehavioral Imaging and Molecular Neuropsychopharmacology Unit. Summary Cocaine binds to the dopamine (DA) transporter (DAT) to regulate cocaine reward and seeking behavior. Zinc also binds to the DAT, but the in vivo relevance… [Read More]
Hypothalamic control of interoceptive hunger
Featured Paper of the Month – December 2021 Published in Current Biology by Justin Siemian, Sarah Sarsfield, Yeka Aponte of the NIDA IRP Neuronal Circuits and Behavior Unit. Summary Regulating food intake is essential for survival and many factors influence feeding behaviors beyond caloric need or “hunger”. Despite this, some neurons that drive feeding in… [Read More]
Functional connectivity of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex predicts cocaine relapse: implications for neuromodulation treatment
Featured Paper of the Month – November 2021 Published in Brain Communications by Tianye Zhai and Yihong Yang et al. in the NIDA IRP Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy Section. Summary Cocaine use disorder is a highly relapsing chronic brain disease with current treatments relatively ineffective. Finding brain areas and brain functional circuits that are… [Read More]
Lateral habenula cannabinoid CB1 receptor involvement in drug-associated impulsive behavior
Featured Paper of the Month – October 2021 Published in Neuropharmacology by Agustin Zapata and Carl R Lupica in the NIDA IRP Electrophysiology Research Section. Summary Studies show that cannabis increases relapse to cocaine seeking following withdrawal, and in humans cannabis and cocaine use are associated with impulse control deficits. We showed previously that an… [Read More]
A closer look at alcohol-induced changes in the ghrelin system: novel insights from preclinical and clinical data
Featured Paper of the Month – September 2021 Published in Addiction Biology by Sara Deschaine, Mehdi Farokhnia and Lorenzo Leggio et al. in the NIDA IRP Clinical Psychoneuroendocrinology and Neuropsychopharmacology Section. Summary Growing evidence shows that ghrelin, a gastric-derived peptide hormone, is involved in regulation of alcohol seeking behavior. Accordingly, the ghrelin system is being… [Read More]
Ventral tegmental area GABA, glutamate, and glutamate-GABA neurons are heterogeneous in their electrophysiological and pharmacological properties
Featured Paper of the Month – August 2021 Published in European Journal of Neuroscience by Jorge Miranda-Barrientos and Marisela Morales, et al. in the NIDA IRP Neuronal Networks Section. Summary The ventral tegmental area (VTA) contains dopamine neurons intermixed with GABA-releasing (expressing vesicular GABA transporter, VGaT), glutamate-releasing (expressing vesicular glutamate transporter 2, VGluT2), and glutamate-GABA… [Read More]
Neuroendocrine Response to Exogenous Ghrelin Administration, Combined With Alcohol, in Heavy-Drinking Individuals: Findings From a Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Human Laboratory Study
Featured Paper of the Month – July 2021 Published in International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology by Mehdi Farokhnia and Lorenzo Leggio, et al. in the NIDA IRP Clinical Psychoneuroendocrinology and Neuropsychopharmacology Section. Summary Evidence from preclinical and clinical studies suggest that the orexigenic hormone ghrelin modulates alcohol-seeking behaviors. Accordingly, the ghrelin system is being studied as… [Read More]
Whole brain dynamics during optogenetic self-stimulation of the medial prefrontal cortex in mice
Featured Paper of the Month – June 2021 Published in Communications Biology by Christopher Cover and Hanbing Lu, et al. in the NIDA IRP Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy Section. Summary Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can image brain dynamics while a human subject engages in a goal-directed task, it has proven extremely challenging to… [Read More]
Beyond abstinence and relapse II: momentary relationships between stress, craving, and lapse within clusters of patients with similar patterns of drug use
Featured Paper of the Month – May 2021 Published in Psychopharmacology by Leigh V Panlilio, et al. in the NIDA IRP Real-world Assessment, Prediction, and Treatment Unit. Summary Despite the popular conception that people in treatment for opioid addiction either become abstinent or relapse into a spiral of continuous drug use, many actually continue using drugs… [Read More]
