Chronic Alcohol, Intrinsic Excitability, and Potassium Channels: Neuroadaptations and Drinking Behavior.

ABSTRACT: Neural mechanisms underlying alcohol use disorder remain elusive, and this lack of understanding has slowed the development of efficacious treatment strategies for reducing relapse rates and prolonging abstinence. While synaptic adaptations produced by chronic alcohol exposure have been extensively characterized in a variety of brain regions, changes in intrinsic excitability of critical projection neurons are understudied. Accumulating evidence suggests that prolonged alcohol drinking and alcohol dependence produce plasticity of intrinsic excitability as measured by changes in evoked action potential firing and after-hyperpolarization amplitude. In this chapter, we describe functional changes in cell firing of projection neurons after long-term alcohol exposure that occur across species a

SUBMITTER: Cannady R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8252120 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature