Persistent Adaptations in Afferents to Ventral Tegmental Dopamine Neurons After Opiate Withdrawal

Material below summarizes the article Persistent Adaptations in Afferents to Ventral Tegmental Dopamine Neurons after Opiate Withdrawal, on July 15, 2015, in JNeurosci and authored by Jennifer Kaufling and Gary Aston-Jones.

The ventral tegmental (VTA) is a complex and heterogeneous structure. Dopaminergic (DA) neurons are a major population of VTA neurons and play a crucial role in reward processes, motivated behavior and drug addiction. Opiate addiction is a growing public health problem, and understanding the mechanisms of opiate actions in brain is crucial in order to treat dependent patients. For those reasons, we focused this study on the acute and chronic effects of morphine on the activity of VTA DA neurons.

About the Contributor

Gary Aston-Jones, PhD

Gary Aston-Jones is the Murray and Charlotte Strongwater Endowed Chair in Neuroscience and Brain Health and the inaugural director of the Brain Health Institute at Rutgers University. He earned his PhD in neurobiology from the California Institute of Technology with James Olds and Floyd Bloom, and was a postdoctoral fellow with Bloom at the Salk Institute.