Witt E D
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Rockville, Maryland 20892.
Behav Neural Biol. 1994 Nov;62(3):168-77. doi: 10.1016/s0163-1047(05)80015-9.
This paper reviews the ontogeny of neurotransmitter systems and neuropharmacological challenge within transmitter systems and discusses the actions of alcohol on such systems during the juvenile through adolescent periods. To place the animal research within the context of human development, an attempt is made to first examine some fundamental principles of developmental research as they relate to the adolescent period. Evidence presented from animal studies indicates that unique neurochemical and behavioral changes are occurring during postnatal development, including adolescence, that could mediate the response to alcohol. The limited number of studies on the neurochemical and behavioral response to alcohol during adolescence has employed rats and has been restricted by the relatively brief adolescent period in that species. While one alternative is to use primates, it is suggested that innovative behavioral paradigms be developed for adolescent animals in other species to study behaviors such as alcohol self-administration or alcohol stimulus discrimination. It is also suggested that existing behavioral models that are more easily adapted to younger age ranges (e.g., conditioned place preference, conditioned taste aversion, thermal response to ethanol) be extended to make ontogenetic comparisons through adolescence and adulthood. This may further our understanding of alcohol's immediate consequences during each maturational stage and, more important, the contribution of early alcohol exposure to excessive drinking and abnormal cognitive and social functioning during subsequent stages of development.
本文回顾了神经递质系统的个体发生以及递质系统内的神经药理学挑战，并讨论了酒精在幼年至青少年时期对这些系统的作用。为了将动物研究置于人类发育的背景下，我们首先尝试研究一些与青少年时期相关的发育研究的基本原理。动物研究提供的证据表明，在包括青春期在内的出生后发育过程中，正在发生独特的神经化学和行为变化，这些变化可能介导对酒精的反应。关于青春期对酒精的神经化学和行为反应的研究数量有限，这些研究使用的是大鼠，并且受到该物种相对较短的青春期的限制。虽然一种选择是使用灵长类动物，但建议为其他物种的青少年动物开发创新的行为范式，以研究诸如酒精自我给药或酒精刺激辨别等行为。还建议将现有的更易于适应较年轻年龄范围的行为模型（例如条件性位置偏爱、条件性味觉厌恶、对乙醇的热反应）扩展到青春期和成年期进行个体发生比较。这可能会进一步加深我们对酒精在每个成熟阶段的直接后果的理解，更重要的是，早期酒精暴露对后续发育阶段过度饮酒以及异常认知和社会功能的影响。
