Significance: 

Alcohol and substance use disorders are characterized by inability to control intake and high rates of relapse. There exists an important public health need to identify and characterize new and more effective treatments. 

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Goals: 

Move science forward by contributing to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms that underlie addiction and to improved treatment of alcohol and substance use disorders.

Ongoing projects in the lab include:

1) circuit mapping and pharmacological approaches to identify neural substrates of alcohol drinking

2) molecular approaches to delineate brain immune signaling pathways that regulate excessive alcohol and drug use 

3) informatics approaches to identify mechanisms that underlie risk for and consequences of alcohol drinking in order to test novel compounds for the treatment of alcohol and substance use disorders

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Approaches: 

We are currently using several complementary approaches in mice to carry out the above research goals: a) clinically relevant drug self-administration models (operant drug self-administration, choice and binge-drinking paradigms), b) viral-mediated gene transfer to map circuits and temporally and spatially control neuronal activity, c) behavioral battery of drug and mood-related assays, and d) RNA Seq and CUT&RUN Seq followed by sophisticated analysis techniques to study transcriptional mechanisms and the regulation of gene expression.