Gregory L Powell, Jonna M Leyrer-Jackson, Julianna Goenaga, Mark D Namba, Jose Piña, Sade Spencer, Neringa Stankeviciute, Danielle Schwartz, Nicholas P Allen, Armani P Del Franco, Erin A McClure, Michael Foster Olive, Cassandra D Gipson
N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a promising glutamatergic therapeutic agent, has shown some clinical efficacy in reducing nicotine use in humans and has been shown to reverse drug-induced changes in glutamatergic neurophysiology. In rats, nicotine-seeking behavior is associated with alterations in glutamatergic plasticity within the nucleus accumbens core (NAcore). Specifically, cue-induced nicotine-seeking is associated with rapid, transient synaptic plasticity (t-SP) in glutamatergic synapses on NAcore medium spiny neurons...
January 2019: Physiological Reports