ABSTRACT
The intercellular communication errors that lead to the symptoms of alcoholism are ultimately due to abnormal molecular processes. The combined single-cell recording and microdialysis technique is an
in vivo
method that is suitable to obtain information on these molecular processes (Ludvig et al., 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001a). The concept of the method is shown in Figure 11.1. This technique, which my colleagues and I developed (Ludvig et al., 1994), has been used in several other laboratories to determine cellular drug actions in the prefrontal cortex (Dudkin et al., 1996), mesopontine nuclei (Thakkar et al., 1998) and basal forebrain (Alam et al., 1999). In fact, simultaneous electrophysiological recording and microdialysis were proposed for human studies in a neurosurgery setting (Engel, 1998). The method is useful for alcohol-related neuroscience research because it allows the monitoring of molecular and cellular effects of alcohol in brain, within the motivational, emotional and cognitive systems, during behavior and for relatively long periods.
