Mouse models of adolescent binge drinking reveal key long-lasting brain changes penn_state
The prefrontal cortex is a key brain region for executive functioning, risk assessment and decision-making. According to Crowley, it's not fully formed in adolescents and is still maturing in humans until around age 25. Disruptions to its development in young people may have serious and long-lasting consequences, added Crowley.
The team, led by Avery Sicher, a doctoral student in Penn State's neuroscience program, used a model of adolescent ethanol exposure in mice to understand how different populations of neurons in the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, are changed by voluntary binge alcohol consumption. Sicher et al. used whole-cell patch clamp electrophysiology, combined with techniques such as optogenetics, which allowed the team to isolate individual neurons and record measurements related to intrinsic excitability, such as the resting membrane potential and the ability for each neuron to fire action potentials. This allowed them to understand how these neurons had changed their ability to signal with other neurons.
Somatostatin neurons release both inhibitory neurotransmitters, like GABA, as well as inhibitory peptides like somatostatin, and proper functioning of these neurons is necessary for a healthy brain. The neurons were more excitable—meaning they were signaling too much and dampening the activity of other key neurons—as far out as 30 days after the mice stopped drinking alcohol, when the mice have transitioned into adulthood.
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