Target Audience

Des Moines University faculty, staff, and students.

Description

The enduring craving for drugs of abuse is a major contributing factor to the relapse to drug-seeking. cue-induced craving progressively intensifies (‘incubates’) over weeks of forced abstinence or withdrawal. This ‘incubation of craving’ has been observed during withdrawal from many different classes of abuse in rodents and humans, yet relatively little is known about this phenomenon or its mechanisms regarding the widely-prescribed prescription opioid, oxycodone (Oxy).

Incubation for psychostimulants depends on time-dependent strengthening of AMPA receptor (AMPAR) transmission onto medium spiny neurons in the nucleus accumbens (NA) through the accumulation of high-conductance, GluA2-lacking, Ca2+-permeable AMPARs (CP-AMPARs). Recent studies have shown that oxycodone craving incubates, and our lab has identified CP-AMPAR emergence in the NA during this time frame. However, it is not known if these receptors are functional contributors to the incubation of oxycodone craving. This talk will focus on our lab's work identifying the timescale of CP-AMPAR emergence, and the functional significance of these receptors during the incubation of oxycodone craving. Together, these will studies provide critical insight on the anatomical locus for CP-AMPAR action and its functional role in driving incubated oxycodone craving.

Speaker

Michael T. Stefanik, PhD
Assistant Professor, Departments of Psychology & Neuroscience, North Central College