Optogenetic investigation of neural mechanisms for alcohol-use disorder

Optogenetic techniques have been widely used in the study of neuropsychiatric diseases such as anxiety, depression, and drug addiction. Cell-type specific targeting of optogenetic tools to neurons has contributed to a tremendous understanding of the function of neural circuits for future treatment o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) N.Y.), 2019-02, Vol.74, p.29-38
Main Authors: Juarez, Barbara, Liu, Yutong, Zhang, Lu, Han, Ming-Hu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohol use
Alcohol-use disorder
Alcoholism
Alcoholism - etiology
Alcohols
Amygdala - physiology
Animals
Anxiety
Behavior
Brain - physiology
Brain research
Drug addiction
Genetics
Habenula - physiology
Humans
Information processing
Mental disorders
Neural circuit
Neural networks
Neurons
Neurosciences
Nucleus Accumbens - physiology
Optics
Optogenetics
Optogenetics - methods
Proteins
Researchers
Transgenic animals
Ventral Tegmental Area - physiology
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Summary:Optogenetic techniques have been widely used in the study of neuropsychiatric diseases such as anxiety, depression, and drug addiction. Cell-type specific targeting of optogenetic tools to neurons has contributed to a tremendous understanding of the function of neural circuits for future treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. Though optogenetics has been widely used in many research areas, the use of optogenetic tools to uncover and elucidate neural circuit mechanisms of alcohol's actions in the brain are still developing. Here in this review article, we will provide a basic introduction to optogenetics and discuss how these optogenetic experimental approaches can be used in alcohol studies to reveal neural circuit mechanisms of alcohol's actions in regions implicated in the development of alcohol addiction. •Here we first review the basic concept of optogenetics.•We provide a background on pre-optogenetic research that investigated how specific brain regions were modulated by alcohol.•We then describe how optogenetics is helping to further explain alcohol-induced adaptations in specific regions of interest.
ISSN:0741-8329
1873-6823
DOI:10.1016/j.alcohol.2018.05.005