Purpose: This institutional training program combines a broadly based curricular training in Neuroscience with research training focused upon neuroscience oriented approaches to drug abuse. Our program provides this training in the context of the interdepartmental Neuroscience Program of our Graduate School, related graduate programs in the basic health sciences and a research environment, which is characterized by a critical mass of NIDA-supported investigators who have a productive history of collaborative research. Program: The training program capitalizes on 4 general arenas of trainer-trainee interaction: curriculum, research training, multiple venues for discussion of research (seminars, retreat, travel to scientific meetings) and structured programs that promote trainee planning for success. The curriculum is based on the graduate program in Neuroscience. The curriculum emphasizes cellular and molecular, systems, and behavioral components of neuroscience, and includes a course in Neuroscience Principles of Drug Abuse. The research encompassed by trainers involves cellular neuroscience integrated with molecular and/or behavioral approaches to problems associated with drug abuse. Training in research will be under the direction of 13 faculty members, all of whom are members of the graduate faculty in Neuroscience. Trainees: The proposed program provides training for 6 predoctoral and 3 postdoctoral trainees. Predoctoral trainees pursuing a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, or students in the departmentally-based graduate programs of Pharmacology, Pharmaceutics, or Comparative and Molecular Biosciences who elect to minor in neuroscience, will be eligible for training under the auspices of the proposed training program. Postdoctoral training by its nature is more customized and varied according to trainer and trainee. The principle to be followed in the proposed program is that the research conducted should include collaborative efforts between laboratories so as to insure an experimental neuroscience perspective. Relevance: Understanding the neurobiological processes underlying conditions that lead to use of addictive drugs (pain and reward systems) as well as plasticity in neurotransmission that occurs with repeated substance use are fundamental to developing new therapeutic approaches that do not promote addiction or disrupt addiction.
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