Eduardo Gallo
Fordham University, NY·Neuroscience
People who use cocaine heavily often struggle to resist immediate rewards long after they stop, choosing a small payoff now over a larger one later. That kind of impulsivity raises the odds of relapse, but the brain circuits that produce it, and how drugs change them, remain unclear.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
Psychology
- Topics
impulsivity
delay discounting
nucleus accumbens
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Test whether dopamine D2 receptors on cholinergic interneurons of the nucleus accumbens control impulsive choice, by using cell type-specific genetic tools in mice to both increase and decrease receptor levels and measuring performance on a delay discounting task.
- Measure how acetylcholine levels in the nucleus accumbens fluctuate during delay discounting using in vivo fiber photometry, and test with optogenetics whether the brief pause in cholinergic signaling after a reward-predicting cue shifts impulsive choice.
- Determine whether cholinergic interneuron D2 receptors and the cue-evoked cholinergic pause are required for the increase in impulsive choice that follows chronic cocaine exposure in mice.
More about the research
Attention has focused on dopamine D2 receptors, sensors for the chemical messenger dopamine, in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region central to motivation and reward. Those receptors sit on many different cell types, so it has been impossible to say which ones matter. This project focuses on an overlooked population: cholinergic interneurons, rare local cells that release acetylcholine and make up only 2 to 3 percent of neurons in the region, yet strongly shape its output and cocaine's reinforcing effects.
Why it matters
Impulsive decision making pushes people recovering from cocaine use toward short-term gains and away from treatment and abstinence, and no treatment currently targets it. Identifying a specific receptor on a rare brain cell type that drives drug-related impulsivity could point to a cell-selective target for therapies aimed at reducing relapse risk.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jun Wang
Texas A&M University-College Station, TX·Neuroscience
Define how cocaine-strengthened inhibition from dMSNs onto cholinergic interneurons reduces thalamic excitation of these interneurons and acetylcholine release, using dual-channel optogenetics, electrophysiology and genetically encoded ACh sensors.
Jared Bagley
Binghamton University, NY·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test whether mouse strains genetically predisposed to extreme cocaine self-administration differ in baseline and acute cocaine-evoked dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens shell, measured with fast-scan cyclic voltammetry.
Heath Schmidt
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Define how amylin receptors on specific cell types, dopamine and GABA neurons of the ventral tegmental area and D1- or D2-receptor medium spiny neurons of the nucleus accumbens, control oxycodone self-administration and relapse-like seeking, using viral gene delivery in transgenic rats.
The school
Fordham University: 1 labs on PI Pages, $28M a year on research, 134 research doctorates a year.
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