Reviews To Read – July 2021. Our review describes recently developed rat models of relapse after voluntary abstinence, achieved either by introducing adverse consequences to drug taking or seeking or by providing mutually exclusive choices between the self-administered drug and nondrug rewards. We discuss recent neuropharmacological findings from studies using these models, future directions, and… [Read More]
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Inactivation of the infralimbic cortex decreases discriminative stimulus-controlled relapse to cocaine seeking in rats
Hot Off the Press – July 7, 2021 Published in Neuropsychopharmacology by Rajtarun Madangopal and Bruce Hope, et al. in the NIDA IRP Neuronal Ensembles in Drug Addiction Section. Discriminative stimuli (DSs) play an important and understudied role in the persistent susceptibility to drug relapse. They signal drug availability (DS+) or unavailability (DS-) and control… [Read More]
Neuroendocrine Response to Exogenous Ghrelin Administration, Combined With Alcohol, in Heavy-Drinking Individuals: Findings From a Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Human Laboratory Study
Featured Paper of the Month – June 2021 Published in International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology by Mehdi Farokhnia and Lorenzo Leggio, et al. in the NIDA IRP Clinical Psychoneuroendocrinology and Neuropsychopharmacology Section. Summary Evidence from preclinical and clinical studies suggest that the orexigenic hormone ghrelin modulates alcohol-seeking behaviors. Accordingly, the ghrelin system is being studied as… [Read More]
An excitatory lateral hypothalamic circuit orchestrating pain behaviors in mice
Hot Off the Press – June 7, 2021 Published in eLife by Justin Siemian and Yeka Aponte, et al. in the NIDA IRP Neuronal Circuits and Behavior Unit. Decades of work have revealed the lateral hypothalamus (LH) as a crucial region for orchestrating appetitive and reward-related behaviors. However, the contributions of genetically-identified lateral hypothalamic neurons to other… [Read More]
Whole brain dynamics during optogenetic self-stimulation of the medial prefrontal cortex in mice
Featured Paper of the Month – June 2021 Published in Communications Biology by Christopher Cover and Hanbing Lu, et al. in the NIDA IRP Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy Section. Summary Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can image brain dynamics while a human subject engages in a goal-directed task, it has proven extremely challenging to… [Read More]
2021 NIDA IRP Mentoring Awards
Congratulations to our 2021 Mentoring Award winners! They were honored at the 9th NIDA Poster Day and Mentoring Awards ceremony on May 19, 2021. From left to right: Huilng Wang, MD, PhD – Diversity Mentoring Award; David Reiner, PhD – Postdoctoral Fellow Mentoring Award; Bruce Hope, PhD – Investigator Mentoring Award; and Jeremiah Bertz, PhD – Staff Scientist Mentoring Award.
Beyond abstinence and relapse II: momentary relationships between stress, craving, and lapse within clusters of patients with similar patterns of drug use
Featured Paper of the Month – May 2021 Published in Psychopharmacology by Leigh V Panlilio, et al. in the NIDA IRP Real-world Assessment, Prediction, and Treatment Unit. Summary Despite the popular conception that people in treatment for opioid addiction either become abstinent or relapse into a spiral of continuous drug use, many actually continue using drugs… [Read More]
A target-agnostic screen identifies approved drugs to stabilize the endoplasmic reticulum-resident proteome
Hot Off the Press – April 30, 2021 Published in Cell Reports by Mark Henderson and Kathleen Trychta, et al. In the paper by Henderson et al., we developed a high throughput screen to identify molecules that can stabilize protein homeostasis inside of cells (brain, muscle, liver, etc) during pathological states. The screen was based… [Read More]
Ketogenic Diet Reduces Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms in Humans and Alcohol Intake in Rodents
Hot Off the Press – April 26, 2021 Published in Science Advances by Corinde Wiers and Leandro Vendruscolo, et al. Previous studies reported that people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) use less glucose and more acetate as a source of energy in the brain. This is because alcohol is broken down by the liver into… [Read More]
Time-Varying Functional Connectivity Decreases as a Function of Acute Nicotine Abstinence
Featured Paper of the Month – April 2021 Published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging by John Fedota, Ph.D. and Thomas Ross, Ph.D., et al. in the NIDA IRP Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience of Addiction Section. Summary Quitting smoking is hard. This is largely due to the nicotine withdrawal syndrome. Withdrawal from cigarettes is… [Read More]
