TY - JOUR
T1 - Relapse induced by cues predicting cocaine depends on rapid, transient synaptic potentiation
AU - Gipson, Cassandra D.
AU - Kupchik, Yonatan M.
AU - Shen, Haowei
AU - Reissner, Kathryn J.
AU - Thomas, Charles A.
AU - Kalivas, Peter W.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Dr. Rachel Smith, Dr. Joshua Beckmann, Megan Hensley, Brenton Mahaffey, Rebecca Szer, and Phong Do for technical assistance. This work was supported by DA007288, DA033690 (C.D.G.), DA003906, DA012513, and DA015369 (P.W.K.) grants from the National Institutes of Health.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Cocaine addiction is characterized by long-lasting vulnerability to relapse arising because neutral environmental stimuli become associated with drug use and then act as cues that induce relapse. It is not known how cues elicit cocaine seeking, and why cocaine seeking is more difficult to regulate than seeking a natural reward. We found that cocaineassociated cues initiate cocaine seeking by inducing a rapid, transient increase in dendritic spine size and synaptic strength in the nucleus accumbens. These changes required neural activity in the prefrontal cortex. This is not the case when identical cues were associated with obtaining sucrose, which did not elicit changes in spine size or synaptic strength. The marked cue-induced synaptic changes in the accumbens were correlated with the intensity of cocaine, but not sucrose seeking, and may explain the difficulty addicts experience in managing relapse to cocaine use.
AB - Cocaine addiction is characterized by long-lasting vulnerability to relapse arising because neutral environmental stimuli become associated with drug use and then act as cues that induce relapse. It is not known how cues elicit cocaine seeking, and why cocaine seeking is more difficult to regulate than seeking a natural reward. We found that cocaineassociated cues initiate cocaine seeking by inducing a rapid, transient increase in dendritic spine size and synaptic strength in the nucleus accumbens. These changes required neural activity in the prefrontal cortex. This is not the case when identical cues were associated with obtaining sucrose, which did not elicit changes in spine size or synaptic strength. The marked cue-induced synaptic changes in the accumbens were correlated with the intensity of cocaine, but not sucrose seeking, and may explain the difficulty addicts experience in managing relapse to cocaine use.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84876439267&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84876439267&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.01.005
DO - 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.01.005
M3 - Article
C2 - 23473317
AN - SCOPUS:84876439267
SN - 0896-6273
VL - 77
SP - 867
EP - 872
JO - Neuron
JF - Neuron
IS - 5
ER -