Cocaine experience induces functional adaptations in astrocytes: Implications for synaptic plasticity in the nucleus accumbens shell.

Astrocytes have become established as an important regulator of neuronal activity in the brain. Accumulating literature demonstrates that cocaine self-administration in rodent models induces structural changes within astrocytes that may influence their interaction with the surrounding neurons. Here, we provide evidence that cocaine impacts astrocytes at the functional level and alters neuronal sensitivity to astrocyte-derived glutamate.

Comparative Effects of Event Detection Methods on the Analysis and Interpretation of Ca Imaging Data.

Calcium imaging has gained substantial popularity as a tool to profile the activity of multiple simultaneously active cells at high spatiotemporal resolution. Among the diverse approaches to processing of Ca imaging data is an often subjective decision of how to quantify baseline fluorescence or . We examine the effect of popular determination methods on the interpretation of neuronal and astrocyte activity in a single dataset of rats trained to self-administer intravenous infusions of cocaine and compare them with an -independent wavelet ridgewalking event detection approach.