Chronic use of addictive drugs causes behavioral adaptations
that represent forms of CNS plasticity. These behaviors include
tolerance, dependence, sensitization and craving/addiction. Our
laboratory studies the hypothesis that step-wise changes in gene
expression, affecting synaptic activity or organization of brain reward
pathways, contributes to CNS plasticity occurring with drug abuse. Our
studies employ expression profiling with high density oligonucleotide
arrays, a massively parallel method for studying gene expression on a
near-genomic level. This allows non-biased study of "networks" of gene
expression changes. Identification of expression patterns contributing
to addiction might generate novel targets for therapeutic agents and
enhance our understanding of mechanisms underlying experience-dependent
CNS plasticity.
