We previously found that excessive ethanol drinking activates Fyn in the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) (Wang et al., 2010; Gibb et al., 2011). Ethanol-mediated Fyn activation in the DMS leads to the phosphorylation of the GluN2B subunit of the NMDA receptor, to the enhancement of the channel's activity, and to the development and/or maintenance of ethanol drinking behaviors (Wang et al., 2007, 201...

• Adaptive neural stress recovery and regulation are key to mental health. Neural after psychosocial was assessed in fMRI. Emotion scores were correlated with positive/negative recovery. Positive evaluation increased corticolimbic adjustment poor emotion regulators. Altered may be risk factors for affective disorders. from promotes healthy cognitive functioning, whereas maladaptive is linked ps...

After a single intraperitoneal injection of the irreversible tryptophan hydroxylase inhibitor p-chlorophenylalanine (PCPA; 300 mg/kg), there was a rapid down-regulation of serotonin (5-HT) transporter mRNA levels in cell bodies. This change was significant at 1 and 2 days after PCPA administration within the ventromedial but not the dorsomedial portion of the dorsal raphe nucleus. Seven days af...

We investigated the neural bases of navigation based on spatial or sequential egocentric representation during the completion of the starmaze, a complex goal-directed navigation task. In this maze, mice had to swim along a path composed of three choice points to find a hidden platform. As reported previously, this task can be solved by using two hippocampal-dependent strategies encoded in paral...

We found previously that acute ex vivo as well as repeated cycles of in vivo ethanol exposure and withdrawal, including excessive voluntary consumption of ethanol, produces a long-lasting increase in the activity of NR2B-containing NMDA receptors (NR2B-NMDARs) in the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) of rats (Wang et al., 2010a). Activation of NMDARs is required for the induction of long-term potentia...

Neurons in anterior cingulate cortex (aCC) project to dorsomedial striatum (DMS) as part of a corticostriatal circuit with putative roles in learning and other cognitive functions. In the present study, the spatial-cognitive importance of aCC and DMS was assessed in the hidden-platform version of the Morris water maze (MWM). Brain lesion experiments that focused on areas of connectivity between...

These experiments examined the effects of dorsomedial striatal inactivation on the acquisition of a response and visual cue discrimination task, as well as a shift from a response to a visual cue discrimination, and vice versa. In Experiment 1, rats were tested on the response discrimination task followed by the visual cue discrimination task. In Experiment 2, the testing order was reversed. In...