Corticostriatal circuitry and habitual ethanol seeking
Introduction
Identification of the neurobiological substrates of habitual ethanol seeking may help to guide the development of novel therapeutic strategies that can enable restoration of behavioral control. While reducing ethanol-seeking habits is not expected to be a stand-alone cure for addiction, or a solution for all individuals with alcohol-use disorders, the ability to restore cognitive control over ethanol-seeking behaviors may enable traditional therapeutic strategies. Despite the applicability of this model to addictive behavior (Everitt, 2014, Kalivas, 2008), a preponderance of the research into the neuroscience of habitual behavior has been performed with models of non-drug reward seeking (e.g., Yin & Knowlton, 2006), rather than ethanol. While it can be argued that the structures mediating non-drug habits regulate the development of habitual behavior in general, recent work suggests that alcohol reinforcers may differentially engage the neurocircuits that control behavioral flexibility (Barker et al., 2014, Corbit et al., 2012, Mangieri et al., 2012, Shillinglaw et al., 2014). In this review, we will focus on the novel application and extension of these findings to the development of habitual ethanol-seeking behavior that, in part, characterizes alcohol-use disorders. We will provide a framework for the role of habitual processes in ethanol-seeking behavior and summarize findings presented at the 2014 Alcoholism and Stress Meeting in Volterra, Italy with the intention to highlight novel observations on the role for corticostriatal circuits in the regulation of ethanol-seeking behavior (for a more in-depth review of the neuroanatomy of habitual processes in ethanol seeking, see Barker and Taylor, 2014, O'Tousa and Grahame, 2014).
Section snippets
Modeling conditioned behavior in alcohol-use disorders
In recent years, there has been a burgeoning interest in understanding drug seeking that is not mediated by the immediate rewarding properties of drugs of abuse. Work in both animals and humans has suggested drugs of abuse, including alcohol, are sought not only for their positive rewarding properties, but also out of habit (Adams, 1982, Dickinson et al., 2002, Robbins and Everitt, 1999). In other words, while drugs of abuse are initially sought for their rewarding properties, over time and
Regulation of reward seeking within the striatum
A significant literature has identified striatal subregions as critical regulators of reward-seeking behavior. While the ventral striatum is thought to be largely involved with cued outcome-mediated behaviors, the more dorsal aspects of the striatum appear to have distinct contributions to goal-directed and habitual reward-seeking behavior. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) can be subdivided into two primary subregions – the NAc shell and the core – with distinct network connectivity with the
Corticostriatal circuits and response-strategy selection
In addition to the unique contributions of striatal subregions to the expression of goal-directed actions and habitual behaviors, cortical structures that project to the striatum are critical in the regulation of reward-seeking behavior. A majority of work pointing to cortical control of habitual behavior has implicated structures within the medial PFC, including the infralimbic and prelimbic subregions. The prelimbic PFC sends glutamatergic projections to the NAc core and DMS, as well as
Ethanol effects on corticostriatal function and the development of treatment strategies
Recent research has identified a number of conditions under which ethanol exposure can alter behavioral flexibility. Habit models have shown that ethanol-seeking habits may develop more rapidly than those for non-drug rewards in animals that are self-administering ethanol (Corbit et al., 2012, Dickinson et al., 2002). Importantly, while animals self-administer pharmacologically relevant doses in recent studies of habitual ethanol seeking (0.4–2.0 g ethanol per kg body weight, varying by study),
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by National Institutes of Health Grants AA007474 and AA023141 (JMB), AA010761 and AA010983 (LJC), AA11852 (RAG), AA018008 (DLR), Australian National Health and Medical Research Council 1051037 (LHC), DICBR NIAAA (CMG) and NIAAA Conference Grant AA071581. The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Patricia Janak, Jane Taylor, and Rui Costa to the work presented in these proceedings.
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