Activation of orbito-accumbens projections does not reliably reverse sign-tracking behavior in adolescent alcohol-exposed rats

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  • February 26, 2019
Creator
  • Jaggers, Hannah
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Biology
Abstract
  • America’s youth consume more than 90% of their alcohol by binge drinking, which could lead to long-term behavioral deficits and alter the developing brain. In animal models, adolescent intermittent ethanol (AIE) exposure has been shown to affect Pavlovian conditioned approach (PCA) behavior, where adult rats exposed to AIE exhibited reduced goal-tracking (approach to reward conditioned response) and enhanced sign-tracking (approach to reward-predictive cue conditioned response), which may act as an indicator for addiction vulnerability. To understand one potential neural circuit underlying AIE effects, we focused on the orbito-accumbens pathway due to its implications in reward learning and because research has shown that adult rats exposed to AIE had significantly less resting-state functional connectivity between the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) compared to control rats. We hypothesized that AIE-exposed female rats would exhibit sign-tracking behavior that could be shifted to goal-tracking through stimulation of orbito-accumbens projections. To determine how activation of the orbito-accumbens pathway affects conditioned behavior in both AIE-exposed and control rats, in vivo optogenetic techniques were utilized to selectively activate OFC neurons projecting to the NAcc while sign- and goal-tracking behaviors were assessed using PCA. We found that activation of the orbito-accumbens projections in AIE-exposed rats did not produce a reliable shift in behavior from sign- to goal-tracking. This finding indicates that the orbito-accumbens pathway is not exclusively responsible for altering reward learning in AIE-exposed rats.
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Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Robinson, Donita
Degree
  • Bachelor of Science
Academic concentration
  • Biology
Honors level
  • Honors
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation year
  • 2018
Language
  • English

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