Faculty & Research

Donita Robinson , Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies

Office | 5007A Thurston-Bowles Bldg, CB#7178

Phone | 919-966-9178  Fax: 919-966-5679

Email | dlr@unc.edu

Lab Website | Behavioral and Pharmacological Neurodynamics Lab

Research Interests

The brain is adept at identifying and obtaining rewards such as food, sex and alcohol.  We study neural activity in dorsal and ventral striatum of the rat, part of the basal ganglia motor pathway, that are crucial to motivated behavior.  The primary behavior studied in the lab is alcohol drinking:  typically, we train rats to press a lever for an alcohol reward in short, daily sessions.  Once trained, we investigate several aspects of the behavior:  subsecond dopamine release, neuronal firing patterns, pharmacological manipulation and behavioral challenge. 

The primary projection neurons of the striatum (medium spiny neurons) encode in their firing rates many aspects of operant responding, including anticipation prior to the session, presentation of cues associated with the reward, the lever press, and the delivery of the reward.  Similarly, fast dopamine release events (called dopamine transients) occur in the striatum at similar events.  Our research investigates several questions related to this neural activity:  Is information about alcohol seeking and alcohol reward processed differently from other rewards in the striatum?  Is “habitual” alcohol seeking processed differently from “goal-directed” alcohol seeking?   How do drugs used to treat alcoholism affect neural activity in the striatum? The practical goal of this research is to indentify brain functions and circuitry that might be therapeutically targeted to treat people with alcohol use disorders.

Other projects in the lab include dopamine measurements in rat models of adolescence, social interaction, stress and binge eating.

Center Line Articles and News

“Habits and Cues in Alcohol Drinking: Dynamic Striatal Activity”

Breaking the Habit: Robinson Lab Investigates Novel Mechanisms of Maladaptive Alcohol Drinking   (Vol 20, No. 4, 2009)

Robinson Lab Moves into Bowles CAS (Vol 18, No. 2, 2007)

Research by UNC Scientist Reveals Alcohol-Specific Neural Substrate in the Brain’s “Reward Circuit" (Robinson) (Vol 16, No. 4, 2005)

Recent Publications

Disparity between tonic and phasic ethanol-induced dopamine increases in the nucleus accumbens of rats. Robinson DL, Howard EC, McConnell S, Gonzales RA, Wightman RM. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2009 Jul;33(7):1187-96.

Robinson DL, Carelli RM. Distinct subsets of nucleus accumbens neurons encode operant responding for ethanol versus water. Eur J Neurosci. 2008 Nov;28(9):1887-94.

Robinson DL, Hermans A, Seipel AT, Wightman RM. Monitoring rapid chemical communication in the brain.Chem Rev. 2008 Jul;108(7):2554-84.

D.L. Robinson and R.M. Wightman (2006).  Rapid dopamine release in freely moving rats.  In A.C. Michael and L.M. Borland (Eds.) Electrochemical Methods for Neuroscience, in series Frontiers in Neuroengineering Series, Vol. 1, CRC Press:  Boca Raton.

D.L. Robinson, T. Voltz, J.O. Schenk and R.M. Wightman (2005).  Acute ethanol decreases dopamine transporter velocity in rat striatum:  in vivo and in vitro electrochemical measurements.  Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 29: 746-755.

D.L. Robinson and R.M. Wightman (2004).  Nomifensine amplifies subsecond dopamine signals in the ventral striatum of freely moving rats.  Journal of Neurochemistry, 90: 894-903.

D.L. Robinson, B.J. Trafton, M.L. Heien and R.M. Wightman (2003).  Detecting sub-second dopamine release with fast-scan cyclic voltammetry in freely-moving rats.  Clinical Chemistry, 49: 1763-1773.

D.L. Robinson, M.L. Heien and R.M. Wightman (2002).  Frequency of dopamine concentration transients increases in dorsal and ventral striatum of male rats during introduction of conspecifics.  Journal of Neuroscience, 22: 10477-10486.

R.M. Wightman and D.L. Robinson (2002).  Transient changes in brain dopamine and their association with “reward.” Journal of Neurochemistry, 82: 721-735.