Vassoler et. al (2013)

This paper discussed the differences in male and female rats that were sired by cocaine-experienced fathers. I found these results really interesting because the male and female offspring acted differently in terms of SalSired vs. CocSired, which was not something I had expected. For example, in Figure 2 CocSired males infused less cocaine than the SalSired males at both doses, while the females shows no significant difference. I found that this paper surprised me, because a lot of my classes have discussed how drug addiction can sometimes have genetic components, and how people with parents who do drugs can be more susceptible to doing the drugs themselves, so I initially expected these results to be the opposite.

I found the implications of BDNF in this paper unexpected, since I hadn’t previously known there was an association. Again, I was surprised by the finding that there was more BDNF in the mPFC of male CocSired rats then SalSired, though after thinking about it I found that this made sense; their brains would be more wired to block the behavioral effects of cocaine since they had a parent who was exposed to all of its negative effects. I also thought that the TrkB antagonist results were interesting, because they demonstrated that a decrease in BDNF could lead to normal acquisition of cocaine. I thought that studying BDNF was important, because it is a neural protector, so using BDNF levels to determine the effects of a cocaine-experienced sire seemed really important, especially since the research has shown previous associations.

Overall, I thought this paper was very interesting and involved a lot of aspects I hadn’t heard about before. I also think it definitely has applicability to humans, since humans also have BDNF, and knowing that increased BDNF helps protect against addiction could be a possible method or treatment in the future.