Featured Review Cell Science Reviews Vol 6 No 3 ISSN 1742-8130

Transcriptional regulators that mediate neural and behavioral adaptations to psychostimulants

Repeated exposure to drugs of abuse drives persistent changes in behavior that can lead to the devastating personal and social consequences of drug addiction. Considerable evidence suggests that drug-induced changes in gene expression are essential for the long-lasting alterations in striatal neuron function that underlie many of these behavioral adaptations. A growing number of transcriptional regulators have been implicated in the cellular response to drugs of abuse, including both sequence-specific DNA binding transcription factors as well as chromatin regulatory proteins that impact gene transcription by altering chromatin structure. Here we review the evidence for the set of transcriptional regulators that are targets of regulation by psychostimulants in vivo, and we discuss the importance of developing a framework for understanding how the functions of multiple transcriptional pathways are integrated to generate the net response to drugs of abuse.

Click to access complete issue ($8.99) and to download full article in or formats