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Muscarinic Acetylcholine M₂ Receptors Regulate Lateral Habenula Neuron Activity and Control Cocaine Seeking Behavior

Featured Paper of the Month – December 2022
Published in The Journal of Neuroscience by Clara Wolfe and Carl Lupica et al. of the NIDA IRP Electrophysiology Research Section.

The lateral habenula (LHb) is a brain region receiving information from brain areas involved in decision making, with influence on motivation, reward, and movement. This interface between thoughts, emotions, and actions is how the LHb permits adaptive behavior, and LHb dysfunction is implicated in psychiatric and drug use disorders. Silencing the LHb impairs control over cocaine seeking in rats and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChR) are also implicated…

Incubation of palatable food craving is associated with brain-wide neuronal activation in mice

Hot Off the Press – November 21, 2022 Summary Relapse to reward seeking progressively increases during abstinence, a behavioral phenomenon termed incubation of craving. Mechanistic studies of incubation can lead to novel relapse treatments. However, previous studies have primarily used rat models and targeted region-by-region analyses, and a brain-wide functional atlas of incubation of reward… [Read More]

Yavin Shaham Wins the 2022 Ruth L. Kirschstein Mentoring Award

Yavin Shaham, Ph.D., Chief of Behavioral Neuroscience Research Branch and Neurobiology of Relapse Section has been awarded the 2022 Ruth L. Kirschstein mentoring award by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of the 2022 NIH Director’s Awards. The NIH Director’s Awards recognizes exceptional performance and special efforts beyond regular job assignments. The Ruth… [Read More]

Technology Development Initiative – Paper of the Month – November 2022

Transgenic mice for in vivo epigenome editing with CRISPR-based systems. Nature Methods.

Gemberling et al. generated and validated two new Cre-dependent transgenic mouse lines harboring LSL-dCas9-p300 (gene activator/histone acetyltransferase) and LSL-dCas9-KRAB (gene repressor/histone methyltransferase). The authors demonstrated that guide RNAs targeting gene enhancers and the gene promoter are effective at modulating both histone modification state and gene transcription. [Read More]

Misconfigured striatal connectivity profiles in smokers

Featured Paper of the Month – November 2022
Published in Neuropsychopharmacology by Thomas Ross and Elliot Stein of the NIDA IRP Neuroimaging Research Branch.

The striatum, part of the forebrain, is critically involved in reward processes and substance use. Many of the inputs to the striatum come from frontal brain regions. One way to study these connections in living humans is using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A common fMRI approach, resting-state functional connectivity, typically examines the temporal similarity of the signals from two brain areas: essentially looking at the connection between ‘point A’ and ‘point B’…

John Hubbard awarded 2022 Humanitarian & Service PA of the Year Award

John Hubbard, MPAS, PA-C in the NIDA IRP OCD, has been awarded the 2022 Humanitarian & Service PA of the Year Award from the Maryland Academy of Physician Assistants. The MdAPA Humanitarian & Service Award seeks to recognize a PA who has shown incredible service to the community, providing care to the most vulnerable and… [Read More]

Technology Development Initiative – Paper of the Month – October 2022

Dense functional and molecular readout of a circuit hub in sensory cortex. Science.

The Comprehensive readout of activity and cell type markers (CRACK) platform combines multi-area two photon calcium imaging microscopy with hybridization chain reaction–fluorescence in situ hybridization (HCR-FISH) to label and track mRNA. CRACK allows researchers to first observe the electrical firing of neurons in the brain of a live mouse during a behavioral task, and then track the expression of specific genes in slices of the animal’s brain, ultimately linking specific cells and their molecular signatures to behaviors. [Read More]

Nonsuicidal Self-Injury and Substance Use Disorders: A Shared Language of Addiction

Featured Paper of the Month – October 2022
Published in Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology by Salvatore Giorgi and Brenda Curtis, et al. of the NIDA IRP Technology and Translational Research Unit.

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), or the deliberate injuring of one’s body without intending to die, has been shown to exhibit many similarities to substance use disorders (SUDs), for example comorbidity with anxiety and depression. Research has further shown that people who self-injure adopt language common in SUD recovery or 12-step communities. Using over 150,000 comments from approximately 5,000 people posting on the social media website Reddit, we investigate the shared language of NSSI and SUD by comparing discussions on public forums related to self-injury and drug addiction…

Acts of appetite: neural circuits governing the appetitive, consummatory, and terminating phases of feeding

Reviews To Read – September 2022. Published in Nature Metabolism and coauthored by Ana Pamela Miranda Tapia and Yeka Aponte of the Neuronal Circuits and Behavior Section (NIDA IRP) and Ivan C. Alcantara and Michael J. Krashes of the Section on Motivational Processes Underlying Appetite (NIDDK IRP). For decades, the prevalence of obesity has surged due… [Read More]

Technology Development Initiative – Paper of the Month – September 2022

SMART: An Open-Source Extension of WholeBrain for Intact Mouse Brain Registration and Segmentation. eNeuro.

Jin et al. presents an optimized protocol for Fos staining, a marker of neuronal activation, in a cleared mouse brain and provide an open-source R package called SMART (Semi-Manual Alignment to Reference Templates) as an extension to the Wholebrain pipeline (PMID: 29203898). SMART is designed to make whole-brain activity mapping more accessible to researchers looking to implement the technique and analysis into their research program. [Read More]