Because insulin acutely enhances the function of dopamine transporters, the tyrosine kinase receptors activated by this hormone may modulate transporter-dependent neurochemical and behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs. In this respect, we examined the effects of insulin on exocytotic monoamine release and the efficacy of the monoamine transporter blocker cocaine in rat nucleus accumbens. Wh...

Substance use disorders (SUD) have been associated with dysfunction in reward processing, habit formation, and cognitive-behavioral control. Accordingly, neurocircuitry models of addiction highlight roles for nucleus accumbens, dorsal striatum, and prefrontal/anterior cingulate cortex. However, the precise nature of the disrupted interactions between these brain regions in SUD, and the psycholo...

Various small molecules act as neurotransmitters and orchestrate neural communication. Growing evidence suggests that not only classical neurotransmitters but also several small molecules, including amino acid derivatives, modulate synaptic transmission. As conditions of acute and chronic pain alter neuronal excitability in the nucleus accumbens, we hypothesized that small molecules released in...

Dopamine receptor function in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and in control progenitor Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats was assessed from their dopamine D1-like/D2-like receptor-mediated jaw movements and dopamine release from the nucleus accumbens and from the ventrolateral striatum measured by an in vivo microdialysis technique. Spontaneous locomotor activity and rearing were significantly high...

Rats with lesion of nucleus accumbens were hypodipsic under free-feeding conditions. In schedule-induced polydipsia (SIP) tests conducted by reducing the rats to 70% of free-feeding body weight and delivering 60 mg bengal gram pellets on a fixed time 1-min schedule, nucleus accumbens lesions did not delay the acquisition or show a decrease in the maintenance of S.I.P.

dopamine (da) is one of the main catecholamines in the brain and is crucial for movement coordination, endocrine function, reward, mood, memory and emotions. the dopaminergic system is the primary therapeutic target in the treatment of parkinson’s disease (pd), drug addiction and schizophrenia. notwithstanding, dysfunction of central dopaminergic neurotransmission has also been associated to de...

BACKGROUND The discriminative stimulus effects of ethanol are mediated in part by the gamma-aminobutyric acid type A (GABA(A)) receptor system. We have previously shown that microinjections of the competitive GABA(A) agonist muscimol in the nucleus accumbens and amygdala fully substitute for the discriminative stimulus effects of systemic ethanol. However, it is not known whether allosteric bin...