The role of mTORC/FRMP pathway in context-induced the reinstatement of alcohol-seeking in rats

Abstract

One of the main problems for treating ethanol addiction is high rates of relapse to drug use. In human addicts, environmental stimuli associated with previous drug use can provoke relapse to drug use after prolonged abstinence. The context-induced reinstatement of drug seeking is an useful animal model for studying relapse to drug. In this procedure, rodents learn to associate particular environment or context cues with drug-taking. Drug-related cues are complex combinations of different stimuli that are recognized with a high degree of resolution. Thus, any neural mechanism capable of encoding these learned associations must have a comparably high degree of resolution. We hypothesize changes in mTORC/FRMP pathway in the nucleus accumbens is a possible mechanism involved in context-induced relapse to alcohol seeking. Here we will study the role of mTORC/FRMP pathway in the context-induced reinstatement of ethanol seeking. For this, we will train rats to self-administer ethanol in context A and extinguished lever pressing in a distinct context B. On test day, the context-induced reinstatement of ethanol seeking will be tested putting the rats back in the ethanol context (A). At the end of the behavioral test, brains will be collected, the nucleus accumbens will dissected, and the western blotting assay will perform to assess changes in the expression of mTORC and FRMP. (AU)