Hyung Nam
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport, LA·Neuroscience
Heavy drinkers often need more alcohol over time to feel the same effect. This tolerance drives more drinking and contributes to alcohol use disorder (AUD), which affected about 14.4 million U.S.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
- Topics
alcohol use disorder
alcohol tolerance
binge drinking
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2031
What they work on
- Determine how chronic alcohol lowers neurogranin, a synaptic protein that tunes glutamate signaling, in the mouse medial prefrontal cortex, and test tolerance in mice with mPFC-specific Ng knockout or overexpression.
- Test whether inducible loss of neurogranin only in excitatory neurons (Cre-CaMKII-ERT2-Ng f/f mice) increases alcohol tolerance after chronic binge alcohol self-administration.
- Measure how chronic alcohol changes glutamate-driven nitric oxide chemistry in the prefrontal cortex, using in vivo microdialysis and label-free proteomics.
- Test whether delivering the nitric oxide donor DetaNONOate to the mPFC prevents alcohol tolerance and alcohol seeking in nNOS knockout and glutamatergic neuron-specific Ng knockout mice.
More about the research
adults in 2018. Understanding the brain changes behind tolerance could point to new treatments. This project focuses on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a brain region involved in decision-making, and on nitric oxide (NO), a gas that neurons use as a signaling molecule.
Why it matters
Alcohol use disorder affects millions of U.S. adults, and tolerance helps drive escalating drinking. By showing whether maintaining nitric oxide levels in the prefrontal cortex prevents tolerance, this work could identify the neurogranin–nitric oxide pathway as a new target for AUD treatments.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Erbo Dong
Ohio State University, OH·Neuroscience
Determine whether PP1a, an enzyme that promotes HDAC4 build-up in the nucleus, drives the ethanol preference, tolerance and anxiety-like behavior seen in adult mouse offspring of prenatally stressed mothers.
Marcus Weera
Tufts University, MA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test whether Avoider rats, which persistently avoid a predator odor-paired context, show blunted activation of lateral habenula-projecting lateral hypothalamus neurons after an aversive dose of alcohol, measured by Fos immunohistochemistry and in vivo fiber photometry.
Amy Lasek
Virginia Commonwealth University, VA·Neuroscience
Map alcohol-induced changes in the cortical extracellular matrix, or "matrisome," using quantitative proteomics and glycomics in mice after six weeks of binge-like drinking in the dark, and compare them with transcriptome datasets.
The school
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport: 6 labs on PI Pages, $32M a year on research, 9 research doctorates a year.
More about Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport
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