Abstract

Adolescents are vulnerable to initiating alcohol use and binge drinking due to typical risk-taking and sensation-seeking characteristics of this period of development. Such behaviors increase the risk for alcohol use disorders in adulthood. Such effects are largely conserved in animal models using adolescent intermittent ethanol (AIE) exposure. Much work has evaluated the behavioral and neural consequences of AIE in males, but knowledge of the effects in females is lacking. The present study seeks to examine the effects of AIE on neural activity of adult females in response to an acute ethanol challenge. We hypothesized that AIE predisposes females to a different pattern of neural activity to ethanol than what has previously been reported in males that associate with established sex differences. The present study used cFos-LacZ transgenic Sprague-Dawley rats, which produce B-galactosidase as a proxy for activated neurons. Subjects underwent AIE or water gavages during early adolescence (P25-45). During adulthood (P75), subjects were acutely challenged with ethanol or saline, and brain tissue was collected one hour later. Brains were coronally sliced and subjected to X-gal enzymatic histochemistry. Analysis is currently underway to determine the degree of neural activation in the dorsal and ventral insular cortex, core and shell nucleus accumbens, as well as central and basolateral amygdala. These results will help define the sex-specific neural contributors following AIE.