Featured Paper of the Month

Featured Paper of the Month – March 2018.

Understanding the neurobiological substrates of excessive alcohol consumption may substantially facilitate efforts to develop better treatments. The cross-talk between the gastrointestinal and central nervous systems, often referred to as the gut–brain axis, is a promising yet underexplored domain in this regard.  Ghrelin is a hormone primarily produced by the stomach and known for its role in increasing appetite and food intake (the “hunger hormone”)…

Featured Paper of the Month – February 2018.

Learned associations between environmental stimuli and rewards drive learning and motivated behavior. These memories are thought to be encoded by alterations within specific patterns of sparsely distributed neurons called neuronal ensembles that are selectively activated by reward-predictive stimuli. Here we use the Fos promoter to identify strongly activated neuronal ensembles in rat prelimbic cortex (PLC) and assess altered intrinsic excitability following 10 days of operant food self-administration training. First, we selectively ablated Fos-expressing PLC neurons that were active during food self-administration…

Featured Paper of the Month – January 2018.

From the NIDA IRP Molecular Mechanisms of Cellular Stress and Inflammation Section

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is cellular organelle that performs critical functions such as the production and processing of proteins, lipids and drugs.  The ER also serves as the primary storage site for calcium inside the cell.  Using a novel biological sensor protein called GLuc-SERCaMP developed by our laboratory at the NIDA IRP, we show that high fat diets causes changes to ER calcium in the livers of rats.  Unrestricted access to high fat food pellets caused molecular changes to regulators of ER calcium and an increase in markers of fatty liver disease…

Featured Paper of the Month – December 2017.

The etiology and pathophysiology of drug addiction are still not well understood. In this research paper, we show that genetic deletion of mGluR2, a presynaptic glutamate autoreceptor, decreases sensitivity to cocaine reward that causes a compensatory increase in cocaine intake and a decrease in relapse to cocaine-seeking behavior in rats…