Special Presentation

Date: Friday, May 26, 2006 Time: Noon to 1:30 Title:  Happy Hour in the PET Scanner: Dopamine When You Least Expect It Speaker: Karmen Yoder, Ph.D. Assistant Research Professor Department of Radiology, Division of Research Indiana University School of Medicine Indianapolis, IN Where:  Waisman Conference Center Room T216, Second Floor, North Tower About the Talk: The evidence for the exact roles of dopamine in the mesolimbic reward system is complex.  Animal research has documented that rewarding stimuli, including alcohol, increase dopamine levels in the ventral striatum.  Other animal studies suggest that dopamine is increased in response to anticipation of reward, or to the conditioned cues associated with the reward, but that DA does not always increase in response to the reward itself.  Neither the dopamine response to alcohol nor the dopaminergic correlates of responses to conditioned cues have been tested fully in humans.  Only one published study has examined alcohol-induced DA release in humans (Boileau et al., 2003), and none has examined the effects of alcohol-related cues on DA release in humans.   Using [11C]raclopride PET, we examined the effects of alcohol and alcohol-related cues on ventral striatal dopamine release in humans.  Data from three studies indicate that dopamine is released in response to unanticipated iv alcohol administration, but that DA does not increase in response to either alcohol-related cues or to alcohol when subjects are expecting it.  For Further Information: Contact Teresa Palumbo at 263-5837 or palumbo@waisman.wisc.edu