Publications by authors named "Kaitlin C Reeves"
Article Synopsis
- Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is a growing public health issue, leading to serious social and health challenges due to increased alcohol consumption and lower abstinence rates, highlighting the need for better treatment strategies.
- The mediodorsal thalamus (MD) plays a crucial role in decision-making and reward processing, but the impact of alcohol dependence on MD function, especially during choices between alcohol and natural rewards like sucrose, remains unclear.
- A study using C57BL/6J mice exposed to chronic intermittent ethanol revealed changes in gene expression and neuronal activity in the MD, indicating that alcohol dependence may alter brain function and increase preference for alcohol over other rewards.
Opioids mediate their effects opioid receptors: mu, delta, and kappa. At the neuronal level, opioid receptors are generally inhibitory, presynaptically reducing neurotransmitter release and postsynaptically hyperpolarizing neurons. However, opioid receptor-mediated regulation of neuronal function and synaptic transmission is not uniform in expression pattern and mechanism across the brain.
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- The opioid crisis has led to an increase in infants exposed to opioids prenatally, raising concerns about long-term neurological effects and future addiction risks.
- Research using a mouse model of prenatal methadone exposure found that adolescent mice exposed to opioids showed altered responses to alcohol, with male offspring being less sensitive to alcohol's rewarding effects while female offspring had heightened sensitivities.
- A new machine learning model successfully predicted prenatal exposure to opioids based on changes in alcohol consumption behaviors, highlighting persistent impacts on the brain's reward systems and behavioral responses to substances like alcohol.
Despite the rising prevalence of methadone treatment in pregnant women with opioid use disorder, the effects of methadone on neurobehavioral development remain unclear. We developed a translational mouse model of prenatal methadone exposure (PME) that resembles the typical pattern of opioid use by pregnant women who first use oxycodone then switch to methadone maintenance pharmacotherapy, and subsequently become pregnant while maintained on methadone. We investigated the effects of PME on physical development, sensorimotor behavior, and motor neuron properties using a multidisciplinary approach of physical, biochemical, and behavioral assessments along with brain slice electrophysiology and in vivo magnetic resonance imaging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe role of Mu opioid receptor (MOR)-mediated regulation of GABA transmission in opioid reward is well established. Much less is known about MOR-mediated regulation of glutamate transmission in the brain and how this relates to drug reward. We previously found that MORs inhibit glutamate transmission at synapses that express the Type 2 vesicular glutamate transporter (vGluT2).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdeno-associated viral vectors (AAVs) are increasingly useful preclinical tools in neuroscience research studies for interrogating cellular and neurocircuit functions and mapping brain connectivity. Clinically, AAVs are showing increasing promise as viable candidates for treating multiple neurological diseases. Here, we briefly review the utility of AAVs in mapping neurocircuits, manipulating neuronal function and gene expression, and activity labeling in preclinical research studies as well as AAV-based gene therapies for diseases of the nervous system.
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