Ebook: The “Drunken” Synapse: Studies of Alcohol-Related Disorders

Over the past two years, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has begun a series of symposia to highlight the need for more integrative re­ search to understand how ethanol alters behavior. Much of the research to date has dealt either at the molecular level or has been whole animal studies. More studies are needed to build our base of knowledge between these two extremes by focusing more on cellular and network levels of organization. To begin this focus on the intermediate steps in this scheme, the NIAAA presented a satellite symposium entitled "Approaches for Studying Neural Circuits: Application to Al­ cohol Research" held at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washing­ ton, DC, on November 16, 1996. This symposium brought together a group of scientists who presented their work on techniques used to study neural circuits. The proceedings of that symposium were published (Y. Liu (Ed.) Approaches for Studying Neural Circuits: Application to Alcohol Research. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 1998 Feb; 22: 1--{j6).

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This volume is divided into three sections: synaptic transmission, synaptic modulation, and synaptic plasticity. Some of the topics covered include: molecular targets underlying ethanol-mediated reduction of hormone release from neurohypophysial nerve terminals; alcohol and general anesthetic modulation of GABA_A and neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors; alcohol and the 5-HT₃ receptor, adenosine and ethanol; metabotropic hypothesis for ethanol sensitivity of GABAergic and glutamatergic central synapses; alcohol, memory, and molecules; novel forms and analyses of ethanol effects on synaptic plasticity; and ethanol suppression of hippocampal plasticity.