Optical suppression of drug-evoked phasic dopamine release (original) (raw)

“…In view of recent studies that show the critical role of synaptic and dendritic pathobiology (Villalba and Smith, 2013) seen in cocaine reinstatement studies (Shen et al, 2014), such studies may be of use in future transplantation experiments to evaluate whether VTA neuronal preservation will provide reversal of dendritic changes in post-synaptic NAc neurons. Our study also provides support to the growing consensus that the VTA-NAc pathway has a significant role in reinstatement of drug-seeking behavior and, as such, adds an additional line of evidence to recent related optogenetic studies in the VTA-NAc pathway (Adrover et al, 2014; Bocklisch et al, 2013; Chandra et al, 2013; McCutcheon et al, 2014; Stefanik et al, 2013). …”