ArticleThe Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics2008
Ethanol modulates synaptic and extrasynaptic GABAA receptors in the thalamus.
Article in The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
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Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 86 citations in OpenAlex.
- Activation by Alcohol of Prefrontal Layer 5 Pyramidal Neurons Depends on Ascending Dopaminergic Input.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Article
- Article
- Synaptic Effects Induced by Alcohol.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- The ethanol inhibition of basolateral amygdala neuron spiking is mediated by a γ-aminobutyric acid type A-mediated tonic current.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2022Article
- Alcohol Use Disorder: Neurobiology and Therapeutics.Biomedicines · 2022Review
- Increased Voluntary Alcohol Consumption in Mice Lacking GABAFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Article
- Mice Lacking GABAFrontiers in pharmacology · 2021Article
- Differential sensitivity of human neurons carrying μ opioid receptor (MOR) N40D variants in response to ethanol.Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Using human stem cells as a model system to understand the neural mechanisms of alcohol use disorders: Current status and outlook.Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) · 2019Review
- GAD mRNA in Orbital Prefrontal Cortex and Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Alcoholics Compared with Nonpsychiatric Controls: A Negative Postmortem Study.Journal of psychiatry and brain science · 2019Article
- GABANeuropharmacology · 2018Review
- The Cerebellar GABAHandbook of experimental pharmacology · 2018Article
- Review
- Role of GABAMolecular brain · 2017Review
- Synaptic targets: Chronic alcohol actions.Neuropharmacology · 2017Review
- Corticotropin-Releasing Factor (CRF) and Addictive Behaviors.International review of neurobiology · 2017Review
- Ethanol-induced GABAA receptor alpha4 subunit plasticity involves phosphorylation and neuroactive steroids.Molecular and cellular neurosciences · 2016Article
- Early postnatal switch in GABAA receptor α-subunits in the reticular thalamic nucleus.Journal of neurophysiology · 2016Article
- Cell-type-specific tonic GABA signaling in the rat central amygdala is selectively altered by acute and chronic ethanol.Addiction biology · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Drinking alcohol is associated with the disturbance of normal sleep rhythms, and insomnia is a major factor in alcoholic relapse. The thalamus is a brain structure that plays a pivotal role in sleep regulation and rhythmicity. A number of studies have implicated GABA(A) receptors (GABA(A)-Rs) in the anxiolytic, amnestic, sedative, and anesthetic effects of ethanol. In the present study, we examined the effects of ethanol on both synaptic and extrasynaptic GABA(A)-Rs of relay neurons in the thalamus. We found that ethanol (> or =50 mM) elicits a sustained current in thalamocortical relay neurons from the mouse ventrobasal thalamus, and this current is associated with a decrease in neuronal excitability and firing rate in response to depolarization. The steady current induced by ethanol was totally abolished by gabazine and was absent in relay neurons from GABA(A)-R alpha(4) subunit knockout mice, indicating that the effect of ethanol is to enhance tonic GABA-mediated inhibition. Ethanol (50 mM) enhanced the amplitude of tonic inhibition by nearly 50%. On the other hand, ethanol had no effect on spontaneous or evoked inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) at 50 mM but did prolong IPSCs at 100 mM. Ethanol had no effect on the paired-pulse depression ratio, suggesting that the release of GABA from presynaptic terminals is insensitive to ethanol. We conclude that ethanol, at moderate (50 mM) but not low (10 mM) concentrations, can inhibit thalamocortical relay neurons and that this occurs mainly via the actions of ethanol at extrasynaptic GABA(A)-Rs containing GABA(A)-R alpha(4) subunits.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.