Stress-Induced Reinstatement of Drug Seeking: 20 Years of Progress

In human addicts, drug relapse and craving are often provoked by stress. Since 1995, this clinical scenario has been studied using a rat model of stress-induced reinstatement of drug seeking. Here, we first discuss the generality of stress-induced reinstatement to different drugs of abuse, different stressors, and different behavioral procedures. We also discuss neuropharmacological mechanisms, and brain areas and circuits controlling stress-induced reinstatement of drug seeking. We conclude by discussing results from translational human laboratory studies and clinical trials that were inspired by results from rat studies on stress-induced reinstatement. Our main conclusions are (1) The phenomenon of stress-induced reinstatement, first shown with an intermittent footshock stressor in rats trained to self-administer heroin, generalizes to other abused drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, nicotine, and alcohol, and is also observed in the conditioned place preference model in rats and mice. This phenomenon, however, is stressor specific and not all stressors induce reinstatement of drug seeking. (2) Neuropharmacological studies indicate the involvement of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), noradrenaline, dopamine, glutamate, kappa/dynorphin, and several other peptide and neurotransmitter systems in stress-induced reinstatement. Neuropharmacology and circuitry studies indicate the involvement of CRF and noradrenaline transmission in bed nucleus of stria terminalis and central amygdala, and dopamine, CRF, kappa/dynorphin, and glutamate transmission in other components of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system (ventral tegmental area, medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and nucleus accumbens). (3) Translational human laboratory studies and a recent clinical trial study show the efficacy of alpha-2 adrenoceptor agonists in decreasing stress-induced drug craving and stress-induced initial heroin lapse

Bax Function in the Absence of Mitochondria in the Primitive Protozoan Giardia lamblia

Bax-induced permeabilization of the mitochondrial outer membrane and release of cytochrome c are key events in apoptosis. Although Bax can compromise mitochondria in primitive unicellular organisms that lack a classical apoptotic machinery, it is still unclear if Bax alone is sufficient for this, or whether additional mitochondrial components are required. The protozoan parasite Giardia lamblia is one of the earliest branching eukaryotes and harbors highly degenerated mitochondrial remnant organelles (mitosomes) that lack a genome. Here we tested whether human Bax expressed in Giardia can be used to ablate mitosomes. We demonstrate that these organelles are neither targeted, nor compromised, by Bax. However, specialized compartments of the regulated secretory pathway are completely ablated by Bax. As a consequence, maturing cyst wall proteins that are sorted into these organelles are released into the cytoplasm, causing a developmental arrest and cell death. Interestingly, this ectopic cargo release is dependent on the carboxy-terminal 22 amino acids of Bax, and can be prevented by the Bax-inhibiting peptide Ku70. A C-terminally truncated Bax variant still localizes to secretory organelles, but is unable to permeabilize these membranes, uncoupling membrane targeting and cargo release. Even though mitosomes are too diverged to be recognized by Bax, off-target membrane permeabilization appears to be conserved and leads to cell death completely independently of mitochondria

Nothing Lasts Forever: Environmental Discourses on the Collapse of Past Societies

The study of the collapse of past societies raises many questions for the theory and practice of archaeology. Interest in collapse extends as well into the natural sciences and environmental and sustainability policy. Despite a range of approaches to collapse, the predominant paradigm is environmental collapse, which I argue obscures recognition of the dynamic role of social processes that lie at the heart of human communities. These environmental discourses, together with confusion over terminology and the concepts of collapse, have created widespread aporia about collapse and resulted in the creation of mixed messages about complex historical and social processes

Against Global Archaeological Ethics: Critical Views from South America

Archaeology as a discipline has been formed largely as a nation-state biopolitical device generating narratives and actions of control, management, classification, and ordering of persons and objects, pasts and presents, their stories, relationships and spaces from a Anglo-Saxon modern mode of knowledge production. In that sense, hegemonic archeology bears its colonial imprint and exhibits the principles that characterize modern Western science of universality, objectivity and rationalism. Thus, archeology has developed and expanded in close partnership with capitalism generating a true industry and mercantilization of the past. Simultaneously, it has been tried to globalize the vision of Western archeology and install a monoculture of knowledge to disqualify others worldview reducing and contracting the present and eliminating those conceptions that do not fit with the scientific canons and principles.Fil: Curtoni, Rafael Pedro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tandil. Investigaciones Arqueológicas y Paleontológicas del Cuaternario Pampeano. Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Investigaciones Arqueológicas y Paleontológicas del Cuaternario Pampeano; Argentin