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Exogenous ghrelin administration increases alcohol self-administration and modulates brain functional activity in heavy-drinking alcohol-dependent individuals.

Featured Paper of the Month – March 2018
Published in Molecular Psychiatry by Farokhnia, M; Grodin, E N; Lee, M R; Oot, E N; Blackburn, A N; Stangl, B L; Schwandt, M L; Farinelli, L A; Momenan, R; Ramchandani, V A; Leggio, L

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”)…

Misuse of Novel Synthetic Opioids: A Deadly New Trend.

Reviews To Read – March 1, 2018. The United States is experiencing an epidemic of opioid overdose deaths. A major factor in this crisis is the increasing availability of potent opioid drugs, including fentanyl and novel synthetic opioids (NSOs). NSOs include various analogs of fentanyl and newly-emerging non-fentanyl compounds which stimulate mu-opioid receptor proteins in… [Read More]

Gs- versus Golf-dependent functional selectivity mediated by the dopamine D1 receptor.

Hot Off the Press – February 15, 2018. The two highly homologous subtypes of stimulatory G proteins Gαs (Gs) and Gαolf (Golf) display contrasting expression patterns in the brain. Golf is predominant in the striatum, while Gs is predominant in the cortex. Yet, little is known about their functional distinctions. The dopamineD1 receptor (D1R) couples to Gs/olf and is highly expressed in cortical… [Read More]

Bidirectional Modulation of Intrinsic Excitability in Rat Prelimbic Cortex Neuronal Ensembles and Non-Ensembles after Operant Learning

Featured Paper of the Month – February 2018
Published in The Journal of Neuroscience by Whitaker, Leslie R; Warren, Brandon L; Venniro, Marco; Harte, Tyler C; McPherson, Kylie B; Beidel, Jennifer; Bossert, Jennifer M; Shaham, Yavin; Bonci, Antonello; Hope, Bruce T

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…

Dopamine Neurons Respond to Errors in the Prediction of Sensory Features of Expected Rewards.

Hot Off the Press! – January 2018. Associative learning is driven by fundamental instructive or teaching signals that reflect errors in the prediction of rewards and other events. Previously dopamine neurons in the midbrain that project widely in the brain have been shown to signal these errors only for value. Here NIDA researchers show that… [Read More]

Compulsive Seekers: Our take. Two Clinicians’ Perspective on a New Animal Model of Addiction

Reviews To Read – January 3, 2018. From the NIDA IRP Real World Assessment, Prediction and Treatment Unit. In this invited commentary, Bill Kowalczyk and I weighed in on a new rat model of addiction developed by Chiara Giuliano in Barry Everitt’s lab at the University of Cambridge. Like other recently developed models of addiction,… [Read More]

High fat diet disrupts endoplasmic reticulum calcium homeostasis in the rat liver.

Featured Paper of the Month – January 2018
Published in The Journal of Hepatology by Wires, Emily S; Trychta, Kathleen A; Back, Susanne; Sulima, Agnieszka; Rice, Kenner C; Harvey, Brandon K

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…

Kenner Rice Elected 2017 National Academy of Inventors Fellow

Dr. Kenner Rice from the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s (NIDA) Intramural Research Program (IRP) was recently named as a 2017 Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). This is the highest professional accolade bestowed to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have… [Read More]

Deletion of Type 2 Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor Decreases Sensitivity to Cocaine Reward in Rats.

Featured Paper of the Month – December 2017
Published in Cell Reports by Yang, Hong-Ju; Zhang, Hai-Ying; Bi, Guo-Hua; He, Yi; Gao, Jun-Tao; Xi, Zheng-Xiong

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…

Preclinical Studies of Cannabinoid Reward, Treatments for Cannabis Use Disorder, and Addiction-Related Effects of Cannabinoid Exposure

Reviews To Read – November 20, 2017
Panlilio, Leigh V; Justinova, Zuzana
Neuropsychopharmacology. 2017 Aug 28.
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