Dopaminergic dynamics underlying sex-specific cocaine reward

Erin S. Calipari, Barbara Juarez, Carole Morel, Deena M. Walker, Michael E. Cahill, Efrain Ribeiro, Ciorana Roman-Ortiz, Charu Ramakrishnan, Karl Deisseroth, Ming-Hu Han () and Eric J Nestler ()
Additional contact information
Erin S. Calipari: Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L Levy Place, New York, New York 10029, USA
Barbara Juarez: Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L Levy Place, New York, New York 10029, USA
Carole Morel: Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029, USA
Deena M. Walker: Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L Levy Place, New York, New York 10029, USA
Michael E. Cahill: Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L Levy Place, New York, New York 10029, USA
Efrain Ribeiro: Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L Levy Place, New York, New York 10029, USA
Ciorana Roman-Ortiz: Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L Levy Place, New York, New York 10029, USA
Charu Ramakrishnan: Stanford University
Karl Deisseroth: Stanford University
Ming-Hu Han: Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029, USA
Eric J Nestler: Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L Levy Place, New York, New York 10029, USA

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Abstract Although both males and females become addicted to cocaine, females transition to addiction faster and experience greater difficulties remaining abstinent. We demonstrate an oestrous cycle-dependent mechanism controlling increased cocaine reward in females. During oestrus, ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neuron activity is enhanced and drives post translational modifications at the dopamine transporter (DAT) to increase the ability of cocaine to inhibit its function, an effect mediated by estradiol. Female mice conditioned to associate cocaine with contextual cues during oestrus have enhanced mesolimbic responses to these cues in the absence of drug. Using chemogenetic approaches, we increase VTA activity to mechanistically link oestrous cycle-dependent enhancement of VTA firing to enhanced cocaine affinity at DAT and subsequent reward processing. These data have implications for sexual dimorphism in addiction vulnerability and define a mechanism by which cellular activity results in protein alterations that contribute to dysfunctional learning and reward processing.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13877 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms13877

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13877

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().