Center Line Newsletter

Volume 18, Number 2, June 2007

Robinson Lab Moves into Bowles CAS

Donita Robinson, PhD

Donita Robinson, Ph.D., recently acquired new lab space in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies. The Robinson Lab will focus on brain mechanisms during alcohol drinking in rats with the aim of understanding the neuronal circuitry that underlies alcohol-motivated behavior.

To study these brain mechanisms, the Robinson Lab makes electrophysiological and electrochemical measurements in the nucleus accumbens, a pivotal component of the brain circuit associated with reward and motivated behavior. For electrophysiological measurements, a voltage follower monitors action potentials of nucleus accumbens neurons that are detected at chronically implanted microelectrode arrays. To measure electrochemical changes, a current follower monitors fluctuations in dopamine concentrations on a subsecond time scale. These measurements are made in real-time while the animal actively seeks and drinks alcohol. Together, these techniques provide an important window on information processing in the nucleus accumbens.

Robinson, assistant professor in the UNC Department of Psychiatry and the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, has been a faculty member of the Bowles Center since 2003. In 2000, she received her doctorate in neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin and joined UNC for her postdoctoral work in analytical chemistry.

Robinson has been studying ethanol’s effects on the brain for nearly ten years and recently received a new grant from the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation. The grant, entitled Neurophysiological adaptations in the nucleus accumbens to chronic and repeated ethanol exposure, will study the changes in nucleus accumbens activity associated with alcohol dependence and withdrawal. The study will also compare different patterns of alcohol exposure and withdrawal and will characterize neuronal firing rates both during the exposure period and the withdrawal phase.
“I believe that the study of nucleus accumbens function is a crucial step in understanding neural adaptations underlying the transition from moderate drinking to alcohol dependence,” said Robinson.