Reviews To Read – March 2019. Cocaine drives persistent changes in synaptic transmission and ventral tegmental area dopamine neuron activity. Francis et al. reviews how these alterations contribute to cocaine addiction and highlight therapeutic avenues for future treatment.
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Molecular Adaptations in the Rat Dorsal Striatum and Hippocampus Following Abstinence-Induced Incubation of Drug Seeking After Escalated Oxycodone Self-Administration.
Featured Paper of the Month – March 2019
Published in Molecular Neurobiology by Blackwood, Christopher A; Hoerle, Reece; Leary, Michael; Schroeder, Jennifer; Job, Martin O; McCoy, Michael T; Ladenheim, Bruce; Jayanthi, Subramaniam; Cadet, Jean Lud
Abuse of opioids including oxycodone is very prevalent in the US. Researchers in the laboratory of Jean Lud Cadet in the NIDA IRP have shown that when rats are given access to oxycodone for several hours, some of the rats will increase the amount of the drug in a very steep fashion whereas others will only take moderate quantities of the drug. They also found, however, that, after a month of withdrawal from oxycodone, all those rats had decreased levels of mu opioid receptor protein in the dorsal striatum, a brain region that is important for habit forming…
Marco Venniro receives the 2019 Young Investigator Award by the European Behavioral Pharmacology Society
The winner of the 2019 European Behavioral Pharmacology Society’s Young Investigator Award is Marco Venniro, Ph.d., for his research examining the influence of social cues on behaviors related to drug addiction which was recently published in Nature Neuroscience. Marco is a CCB Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Yavin Shaham, Ph.d. Prior to this award, Marco has also been the… [Read More]
Lorenzo Leggio given the ACNP Eva King-Killam Research Award
The American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) has named Lorenzo Leggio, M.D., Ph.D. as the winner of the Eva King-Killam Research Award. Dr. Leggio is a Clinical Investigator and Section Chief for the NIAAA and NIDA Intramural Research Programs (IRPs). He also serves as Associate Director for Clinical Research for the NIDA IRP Medication Development Program…. [Read More]
Deletion of the type 2 metabotropic glutamate receptor increases heroin abuse vulnerability in transgenic rats.
Featured Paper of the Month – February 2019
Published in Neuropsychopharmacology by Gao, Jun-Tao; Jordan, Chloe J; Bi, Guo-Hua; He, Yi; Yang, Hong-Ju; Gardner, Eliot L; Xi, Zheng-Xiong
Despite extensive research in the past decades, little is known about the etiology of opioid addiction. In this study, Xi and colleagues found that genetic deletion of mGluR2, a glutamate receptor subtype, in rats caused an increase in brain dopamine responses to heroin and in opioid reward, facilitating the development of opioid use and abuse. This finding suggests that low-mGluR2 expression in the brain may be a risk factor for the development of opioid abuse and addiction…
A deeper insight into how GABA-B receptor agonism via baclofen may affect alcohol seeking and consumption: lessons learned from a human laboratory investigation.
Hot Off the Press – January 29, 2019. The GABA-B receptor agonist baclofen has been investigated and used as a treatment for alcohol use disorder, but data from clinical studies remain inconsistent. Additional research is needed to understand the biobehavioral mechanisms underlying baclofen’s effect in relation to alcohol use. In the present study, thirty-four alcohol-dependent… [Read More]
Expression of immediate early genes in brain reward circuitries: Differential regulation by psychostimulant and opioid drugs.
Reviews To Read – January 2019. Although some of the clinical manifestations of substance use disorders might be superficially similar, it is highly likely that different classes of abused drugs including opioids (heroin, morphine, and oxycodone, other opioids) and psychostimulants (cocaine and amphetamines) cause different neuroadaptations in various brain regions dependent in the distribution and concentration of their biochemical… [Read More]
AP-MALDI Mass Spectrometry Imaging of Gangliosides Using 2,6-Dihydroxyacetophenone.
Featured Paper of the Month – January 2019
Published in Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry by Jackson, Shelley N; Muller, Ludovic; Roux, Aurelie; Oktem, Berk; Moskovets, Eugene; Doroshenko, Vladimir M; Woods, Amina S
Gangliosides are complex glycosphingolipids and have been implicated in brain development, neuritogenesis, memory formation, synaptic transmission and aging. Disruptions in ganglioside metabolism has been linked to several diseases such as Niemann-Pick C, and Gaucher disease types II, Alzheimer disease and Guillain-Barre syndrome. GD1s are the most abundant ganglioside species in the mammalian brain and consist of two structural isomers, GD1a and GD1b.Traditionally, the only way to analyze these isomers by mass spectrometry involved extraction and thus the researcher loses information about the location of the isomers in tissue…
NIDA IRP Welcomes Brenda Curtis, Ph.D.
NIDA welcomes Brenda L. Curtis, PhD who joined the IRP on January 7th as a new Investigator (Tenure-Track) within the Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics Research Branch (CPTRB). Dr. Curtis will lead a cutting-edge clinical research program as the Principal Investigator of the Technology and Translational Research Unit. Dr. Curtis earned both a bachelor’s degree in… [Read More]
Ventral midbrain astrocytes display unique physiological features and sensitivity to dopamine D2 receptor signaling.
Featured Paper of the Month – December 2018
Published in Neuropsychopharmacology by Xin, Wendy; Schuebel, Kornel E; Jair, Kam-Wing; Cimbro, Raffaello; Biase, Lindsay M De; Goldman, David; Bonci, Antonello
Astrocytes are ubiquitous CNS cells that support tissue homeostasis through ion buffering, neurotransmitter recycling, and regulation of CNS vasculature. Yet, despite the essential functional roles they fill, very little is known about the physiology of astrocytes in the ventral midbrain, a region that houses dopamine-releasing neurons and is critical for reward learning and motivated behaviors. Using a combination of whole-transcriptome sequencing, histology, slice electrophysiology, and calcium imaging, Xin et al. performed the first functional and molecular profiling of ventral midbrain astrocytes and observed numerous differences between these cells and their telencephalic counterparts, both in their gene expression profile and in their physiological properties…
