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Bryan Singer
Graduate Student, Committee on Neurobiology
 

I am conducting behavioral, molecular, and neuroanatomical experiments to study the neuronal plasticity underlying psychostimulant sensitization.  Repeated exposure to psychostimulants such as amphetamine leads to an enhancement of their behavioral and biochemical effects, known as sensitization. The expression of behavioral sensitization may come under strong conditioned stimulus control so that sensitized responding is only apparent when animals are tested in the presence of environmental stimuli previously paired with the drug.

My research aims to isolate neuroadaptations corresponding to either sensitization or conditioning phenotypes by:

• Using pharmacology and viral-mediated gene transfer to inhibit cdk5-related activity in the nucleus accumbens during amphetamine exposure in order to block the formation of associative conditioning while preserving non-associative sensitization

• Using immunoblotting and immunohistochemistry to characterize differences in brain protein expression patterns in rats exposed to systemic versus ventral tegmental area injections of amphetamine – drug exposure routes which differentially effect conditioning and sensitization

• Examining cell-type-specific conditioning-related changes in dendritic neuroanatomy by injecting immunnohistochemically identified cells with the fluorescent neuronal tracer DiI.     

 

Papers:

Singer BF, Scott-Railton J, Vezina P. Unpredictable saccharin reinforcement enhances locomotor responding to amphetamine. Behavioural Brain Research 2012; 226: 340-344.

Singer BF, Loweth JA, Neve RL, Vezina P. Transient viral-mediated overexpression of α-calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II in the nucleus accumbens shell leads to long-lasting functional upregulation of α-amino-3-hydroxyl-5-methyl-4-isoxazole-propionate receptors: Dopamine type-1 receptor and protein kinase A dependence. European Journal of Neuroscience 2010; 31: 1243-1251.

Loweth JA, Singer BF, Baker LK, Wilke G, Inamine H, Bubula N, Alexander JK, Carlezon WA Jr, Neve RL, Vezina P. Transient overexpression of α-Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II in the nucleus accumbens shell enhances behavioral responding to amphetamine. The Journal of Neuroscience 2010; 30: 939-949.

Singer, B.F., Tanabe, L.M., Gorny, G., Jake-Matthews, C., Li, Y., Kolb, B., Vezina, P., (2009) Amphetamine-Induced Changes in Dendritic Morphology in Rat Forebrain Correspond to Associative Drug Conditioning Rather than Nonassociative Drug Sensitization. Biological Psychiatry, 2009; 65: 835-840.

Hunter, J.D., Hanan, D.M., Singer, B.F., Shaikh, S., Brubaker, K.A., Hecox, K.E., Towle, V.L. (2005) Locating chronically implanted subdural electrodes using surface reconstruction. Clin Neurophysiology 116(8), 1984-7.

Abstracts (last two years):

Singer BF, Vezina P. Blockade of cyclin-dependent kinase 5 in the nucleus accumbens during amphetamine exposure reduces conditioned locomotor responding to drug-paired cues. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 2010; 36: 163.1.

Singer BF, Scott-Railton J, Bindokas V, Vezina P. Uncertainty of saccharin reinforcement leads to enhanced responding to amphetamine and alterations in dendritic spine density in the nucleus accumbens. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 2009.

 

 
UCMC The University of Chicago Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neurosciences
5841 S. Maryland Ave., MC 3077
Chicago, IL 60637-1470
 
Last Update: October 27, 2009