Drug abuse and dependence are major public health issues worldwide.\u00a0\u00a0Addiction is relatively unique among psychiatric\/neurological disorders in that the deleterious actions are brought on by the willful intake of a substance even under conditions where the abuser is aware of the negative consequences.\u00a0\u00a0Thus addictive disorders are unique in being self-perpetuated by a conscious act.\u00a0\u00a0This perhaps increases the frustration with this disorder where the apparent \u201ccure\u201d is simply to stop taking the abused substance.\u00a0\u00a0For many years research and rehabilitative medicine focused on the initial negative consequences of cessation of intake, withdrawal.\u00a0\u00a0Increasingly however, addiction is understood as a long-lasting change in brain function outlasting withdrawal.\u00a0\u00a0Relapse driven by learned associations (cue, context) as well as by mental state transitions (stress, anxiety) can occur long after obvious negative consequences of cessation of drug intake have stopped.\u00a0\u00a0Thus, intense focus is being placed on neural mechanisms driving drug \u201ccraving\u201d sensation and initiation of relapse to intake after extinction.\u00a0 Our lab takes a combination of brain slice electrophysiological and biochemical approaches coupled with behavioral analysis in mice to\u00a0begin to determine the lasting changes produced by\u00a0drugs of abuse that induce relapse behavior.<\/p>\n
Lasting modifications of synaptic transmission in response to transient synaptic activity have long been hypothesized to play roles in animal behavior, particularly in learning and memory.\u00a0\u00a0Since the early 1970\u2019s, it has been recognized that glutamatergic synapses in the hippocampal formation can undergo long-lasting enhancement of synaptic transmission.\u00a0\u00a0The most commonly studied form of persistent modification of synaptic transmission in the CNS is NMDAR-LTP at glutamatergic synapses within the hippocampus.\u00a0\u00a0The associative nature of NMDAR-mediated plasticity imparted by the required removal of tonic magnesium blockade of the NMDAR has made it particularly attractive for study as a substrate for some forms of associative learning.\u00a0\u00a0This has been particularly true of NMDAR-LTP in area CA1 of hippocampus.
\nA variety of data suggest that there exist multiple forms of synaptic plasticity in the mammalian brain.\u00a0\u00a0These include forms that differ in sign (lasting enhancement or depression of transmission), in induction mechanisms and in maintenance mechanisms.\u00a0\u00a0The induction of these distinct forms of plasticity depends upon synapse location, stimulus protocol, neuromodulation, and synaptic history.\u00a0The clear delineation of the induction and maintenance mechanisms of these forms of plasticity has been hindered both by their frequent coexistence at synapses, as well as the difficulty in distinguishing modulators from mediators.\u00a0\u00a0Our lab is particularly interested in determining factors that govern modulation of synaptic plasticity, both in the hippocampus, as well as in drug reward circuitry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Research Addiction Drug abuse and dependence are major public health issues worldwide.\u00a0\u00a0Addiction is relatively unique among psychiatric\/neurological disorders in that the deleterious actions are brought on by the willful intake of a substance even under conditions where the abuser is aware of the negative consequences.\u00a0\u00a0Thus addictive disorders are unique in being self-perpetuated by a conscious…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":292,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"page_onecolumn.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/91\/revisions\/269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/winder-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}