Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, University of Chicago, MC4028, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
J Mol Neurosci. 2010 Jan;40(1-2):154-63. doi: 10.1007/s12031-009-9230-7. Epub 2009 Aug 11.
Use of tobacco products contributes to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and untold millions of dollars in health care costs in this country each year. Nicotine is the principal neuroactive component in tobacco, but, despite ongoing research efforts, the cellular basis of its effects on behavior remains unclear. Efforts to resolve this conundrum have focused on the mesoaccumbens dopamine system, which contributes to the rewarding effects of many addictive drugs, including nicotine. The goal of this review is to outline recent advances and highlight some of the important unanswered questions regarding nicotine's effects on neuronal excitability and synaptic plasticity within the brain reward pathways.
烟草制品的使用导致每年本国有数十万人过早死亡，并造成了难以估量的医疗保健费用。尼古丁是烟草中的主要神经活性成分，但尽管研究工作一直在进行，但它对行为的影响的细胞基础仍不清楚。为了解决这个难题，人们一直致力于研究中脑边缘多巴胺系统，该系统有助于许多成瘾药物（包括尼古丁）的奖赏效应。本文的目的是概述最近的进展，并强调关于尼古丁对大脑奖赏通路中神经元兴奋性和突触可塑性影响的一些重要未解决的问题。
