Depression Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Depression, including details on clinical depression, medication, symptoms, treatment, counselling, therapy.

Group I mGluRs and long-term depression: potential roles in addiction?

Grueter BA, McElligott ZA, Winder DG

Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Room 724B, RRB, Nashville, TN 37232-0615, USA.

Addiction is an enormous societal problem. A number of recent studies have focused on adaptations at glutamatergic synapses that may play a role in the behavioral responses to drugs of abuse. These studies have largely focused on NMDA receptor-dependent forms of synaptic plasticity such as NMDA receptor-dependent long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD). A growing body of evidence, however, suggests that metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) also play important roles in the behavioral responses to drugs of abuse and participate in producing synaptic plasticity at glutamate synapses. In this review, we focus first on the evidence supporting a role for mGluRs in addiction and then on the properties of mGluR-dependent forms of synaptic plasticity, focusing in particular on Gq-linked receptor-induced LTD.

Published 23 October 2007 in Mol Neurobiol, 36(3): 232-44.
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