Abstract
One of the important problems in the treatment of addiction is the vulnerability of previously addicted individuals to relapse to drug use months or even years after abstinence. Longitudinal, retrospective, and laboratory studies suggest that important factors in drug relapse are exposure to cues previously associated with the reinforcer, exposure to small amounts of the reinforcer itself, or exposure to stressful situations. Thus, studying the neuronal circuitry underlying relapse is critical for the development of effective treatments for addiction. Though studies of relapse to drug seeking using experimental animals, primarily rodents, have provided invaluable information on the neurobiological basis of relapse, the precise neurochemical events that contribute to the various forms of relapse are still not completely understood. Furthermore, treatments available to treat relapse to drug addiction are almost non-existent, suggesting that significant efforts need to be concentrated in delineating the role of distinct neural circuits and cell types within these circuits in the mechanisms underlying drug relapse. In the recent years, much research has been directed at identifying and validating sophisticated new technologies that allow investigators to modulate the activity of specific neurons within a brain region or a neural circuit with unprecedented precision. Here, we describe methods based upon recent advances in molecular biology techniques, using the Designer Receptor Exclusively Activated by Designer Drug (DREADD) technology to identify the role of modulation of neuronal activity within a brain region and in discrete neural circuits during complex behavioral tasks. These techniques will serve as valuable tools not only to parse out the neural circuitry that underlies addictive behaviors, but will also be useful to the neuroscience community in understanding the biological bases of other neuropsychiatric disorders.
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Nair, S.G., Smirnov, D., Neumaier, J.F. (2015). DREADD’ed Addiction: Using Designer Receptors to Delineate Neural Circuits Underlying Drug-Seeking Behaviors. In: Thiel, G. (eds) Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs. Neuromethods, vol 108. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2944-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2944-3_8
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-2943-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-2944-3
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