Cellular interactions between social experience, alcohol sensitivity, and GABAergic inhibition in a crayfish neural circuit.

We report here that prior social experience modified the behavioral responses of adult crayfish to acute alcohol exposure. Animals housed individually for 1 wk before alcohol exposure were less sensitive to the intoxicating effects of alcohol than animals housed in groups, and these differences are based on changes in the nervous system rather than differences in alcohol uptake. To elucidate the underlying neural mechanisms, we investigated the neurophysiological responses of the lateral giant (LG) interneurons after alcohol exposure.