Publications by authors named "William D Starnes"
Article Synopsis
- Adolescence is a time marked by higher rates of risk-taking behaviors, including alcohol and drug use, which are linked to future alcohol use disorders in adults.
- Despite many studies on this topic, there’s a lack of preclinical research isolating the biological effects of adolescent drinking from social and environmental influences, resulting in mixed findings.
- In a series of studies using different rodent models across multiple labs, researchers found no significant increase in adult alcohol consumption after adolescent drinking, suggesting that human risks may stem from factors not present in these animal studies.
Adolescent drug consumption has increased risks to the individual compared to consumption in adulthood, due to the likelihood of long-term and permanent behavioral and neurological adaptations. However, little is known about how adolescent alcohol consumption influences the maturation and trajectory of cortical circuit development. Here, we explore the consequences of adolescent binge drinking on somatostatin (SST) neuronal function in superficial layers of the prelimbic (PL) cortex in male and female SST-Ai9 mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman adolescence is a period of development characterized by wide ranging emotions and behavioral risk taking, including binge drinking (Konrad et al., 2013). These behavioral manifestations of adolescence are complemented by growth in the neuroarchitecture of the brain, including synaptic pruning (Spear, 2013) and increases in overall white matter volume (Perrin et al.
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