Featured Paper of the Month – April 2018. The lateral habenula (LHb) is a brain structure that participates in cognitive and emotional processing and has been implicated in several mental disorders. Although one of the largest inputs to the LHb originates in the lateral preoptic area (LPO), little is known about how the LPO participates… [Read More]

Featured Paper of the Month – March 2018. 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… [Read More]

Featured Paper of the Month – February 2018. 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… [Read More]

Featured Paper of the Month – January 2018. 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. … [Read More]

Featured Paper of the Month – December 2017. 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… [Read More]