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Nicotine and Behavioral Sensitization

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Abstract

Use of tobacco products contributes to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and untold millions of dollars in health care costs in this country each year. Nicotine is the principal neuroactive component in tobacco, but, despite ongoing research efforts, the cellular basis of its effects on behavior remains unclear. Efforts to resolve this conundrum have focused on the mesoaccumbens dopamine system, which contributes to the rewarding effects of many addictive drugs, including nicotine. The goal of this review is to outline recent advances and highlight some of the important unanswered questions regarding nicotine’s effects on neuronal excitability and synaptic plasticity within the brain reward pathways.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Robert Mitchum for his helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this manuscript and W. Green and P. Vezina for encouragement and support of our research efforts. This work was supported by NIH grants DA015918 and DA019695.

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  1. Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, University of Chicago, 5841 S Maryland Ave, MC4028, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Danyan Mao & Daniel S. McGehee

  2. Committee on Neurobiology, University of Chicago, 5841 S Maryland Ave, MC4028, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Daniel S. McGehee

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  1. Danyan Mao
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  2. Daniel S. McGehee
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Correspondence to Daniel S. McGehee.

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Proceedings of the XIII International Symposium on Cholinergic Mechanisms

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Mao, D., McGehee, D.S. Nicotine and Behavioral Sensitization. J Mol Neurosci 40, 154–163 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12031-009-9230-7

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