ICAN SEMINAR

Tuesday, September 17th,2019
11AM, Dale Melbourne Herklotz Conference Center, Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (Building 506 on the campus map)

Michael Scofield, Ph.D
Medical University of South Carolina

“Corticostriatal plasticity in cocaine addiction and relapse”

Abstract: The seminar will detail two ongoing studies. The first describes an investigation of the impact of abstinence from cocaine self-administration (SA) on structural plasticity and expression of relapse-related proteins, in prelimbic (PrL) cortical neurons that project to the nucleus accumbens core (NAcore). Specifically, we investigated the impact of abstinence duration on dendritic spine morphology using confocal microscopy. We also developed a strategy to render and isolate signal for GluA1- and GluA2 immunoreactivity within spine heads in PrL-NAcore neurons. Our findings reveal biphasic, abstinence duration-dependent alterations in dendritic spine morphology and glutamate receptor immunoreactivity, in PrL neurons that project to the NAcore after cocaine SA. The second study describes wireless, second-by-second recordings of glutamate and nitric oxide in the NAcore of animals actively relapsing to cocaine cues. Here we explore the relationship between glutamate and nitric oxide release in response to cue exposure during relapse.