Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews
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Dysregulation of pain neurocircuitry and neurochemistry has been increasingly recognized as playing a critical role in a diverse spectrum of diseases including migraine, fibromyalgia, depression, and PTSD. Evidence presented here supports the hypothesis that alcohol dependence is among the pathologies arising from aberrant neurobiological substrates of pain. ⋯ We also consider possible genetic links between pain transmission and alcohol dependence. We propose an allostatic load model in which episodes of alcohol intoxication and withdrawal, traumatic stressors, and injury are each capable of dysregulating an overlapping set of neural substrates to engender sensory and affective pain states that are integral to alcohol dependence and comorbid conditions such as anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.
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Neurosci Biobehav Rev · Oct 2012
Review Meta AnalysisNeuropsychological consequences of chronic opioid use: a quantitative review and meta-analysis.
It is widely assumed within the accumulated literature that neuropsychological function is commonly impaired as a consequence of chronic opioid use. ⋯ This analysis highlighted methodological problems present in the literature used and the value of utilising meta-analytic techniques to help further elucidate the neuropsychological consequences of chronic opioid use from 'core' addiction phenotypes.
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Much research shows that early life manipulations have enduring behavioral, neural, and hormonal effects. However, findings of learning and memory performance vary widely across studies. We reviewed studies in which pre-weaning rat pups were exposed to stressors and tested on learning and memory tasks in adulthood. ⋯ Opposing effects on performance for spatial/relational memory also depended upon timing of manipulation. Enhanced performance was likely if the manipulation occurred during postnatal week 3 but performance was impaired if it was confined to the first two postnatal weeks. Thus, the relationship between early life experiences and adulthood learning and memory performance is multifaceted and decidedly task-dependent.
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It is well known that stressful experiences may affect learning and memory processes. Less clear is the exact nature of these stress effects on memory: both enhancing and impairing effects have been reported. ⋯ The undisturbed consolidation of these experiences is then promoted by genomic glucocorticoid actions that induce a 'memory storage mode', which suppresses competing cognitive processes and thus reduces interference by unrelated material. Highlighting some current trends in the field, we further argue that stress affects learning and memory processes beyond the basolateral amygdala and hippocampus and that stress may pre-program subsequent memory performance when it is experienced during critical periods of brain development.
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Neurosci Biobehav Rev · Aug 2012
ReviewTowards a functional organization of episodic memory in the medial temporal lobe.
Here we describe a model of medial temporal lobe organization in which parallel "what" and "where" processing streams converge within the hippocampus to represent events in the spatio-temporal context in which they occurred; this circuitry also mediates the retrieval of context from event cues and vice versa, which are prototypes of episodic recall. Evidence from studies in animals are reviewed in support of this model, including experiments that distinguish characteristics of episodic recollection from familiarity, neuropsychological and recording studies that have identified a key role for the hippocampus in recollection and in associating events with the context in which they occurred, and distinct roles for parahippocampal region areas in separate "what" and "where" information processing that contributes to recollective and episodic memory.