ArticlesTime-Dependent Effects of Acute Ethanol Administration on Regional Cerebral Blood Flow in the Rat
Section snippets
Animals
Twenty-five adult male Sprague–Dawley rats that weighed 250–300 g at the time of the experiment were used as subjects. Animals were housed under a 12 L:12 D cycle, lights on at 0700 h, with access to food (Purina rat chow) and water ad lib. All procedures were carried out in accordance with established practices as described in the NIH Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. In addition, all procedures were reviewed and approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Wake Forest
Experiment 1—Effects of Time After Ingestion of a Single Dose of Ethanol
The effects of the acute injection of 0.8 g/kg of ethanol on RCBF in ethanol-naive rats were determined at 5 and 15 min after the administration of ethanol. These time points were chosen because they occurred at distinctly different places on the blood ethanol curve, as shown in Fig. 1. Rates of RCBF were determined for individual brain structures and are shown in Table 1.
Ethanol altered RCBF in a restricted group of brain structures (one-way ANOVA, p < 0.05). Post hoc comparisons identified
Discussion
The present results demonstrate that the effects of the acute administration of ethanol on RCBF clearly vary as a function of time since administration. These time-dependent alterations in rates of RCBF provide evidence that the effects of ethanol undergo dynamic changes even over a relatively brief period of time. In addition, these results indicate that level of blood ethanol alone cannot predict the pattern of changes in functional activity produced by ethanol. The time since ingestion must
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by NIAAA Grant AA09291 (L.J.P.). Special thanks is offered to Stephanie Hart for her technical expertise and to Hilary Smith for her careful editing of this manuscript.
References (59)
- et al.
Caffeine and human cerebral blood flowA positron emission tomography study
Life Sci.
(1990) - et al.
Acute ethanol administration selectively alters localized cerebral glucose metabolism
Brain Res.
(1988) - et al.
Effect of spontaneous ingestion of ethanol on brain dopamine metabolism
Life Sci.
(1989) Behavioral correlates of single units in the medial septal areaThe effect of ethanol
Neuroscience
(1996)- et al.
Acute tolerance to ethanol inhibition of NMDA-mediated EPSPs in the CA1 region of the rat hippocampus
Brain Res.
(1994) - et al.
The role of the olfactory tubercle in the effects of cocaine, morphine and brain-stimulation reward
Brain Res.
(1991) - et al.
Neurobehavioral studies of ethanol reward and activation
Alcohol
(1990) - et al.
EEG alpha activity increases during transient episodes of ethanol-induced euphoria
Pharmacol. Biochem. Behav.
(1986) - et al.
Dopamine depletion in the rostral nucleus accumbens alters the cerebral metabolic response to cocaine in the rat
Brain Res.
(1997) - et al.
Ethanol alters monoamines in specific mouse brain regions
Brain Res. Bull.
(1992)