Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
The Role Of Connexin-36 Gap Junctions In Alcohol Intoxication And Reward, Kathryn Diane Bradley
The Role Of Connexin-36 Gap Junctions In Alcohol Intoxication And Reward, Kathryn Diane Bradley
Theses and Dissertations
The purpose of this thesis project was to examine the function of connexin-36 (Cx36) gap junctions (GJs) in producing alcohol's intoxicating and rewarding effects. GABA neurons are thought to inhibit dopamine (DA) neurotransmission in the mesocorticolimbic system, which originates in the midbrain ventral tegmental area (VTA) and projects to limbic structures such as the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). The mesolimbic DA system is believed to be the neural substrate of alcohol intoxication and addiction (Tepper, Paladini, & Celada, 1998). Alcohol suppresses the firing rate of GABA neurons in the VTA (Gallegos, Criado, Lee, Henriksen, & Steffensen, 1999) and presumably disinhibits DA …