title: Acetaldehyde, Motivation and Stress: Behavioral Evidence of an Addictiveménage à trois.
abstract: Acetaldehyde (ACD) contributes to alcohol's psychoactive effects through its own rewarding properties. Recent studies shed light on the behavioral correlates of ACD administration and the possible interactions with key neurotransmitters for motivation, reward and stress-related response, such as dopamine and endocannabinoids. This mini review article critically examines ACD psychoactive properties, focusing on behavioral investigations able to unveil ACD motivational effects and their pharmacological modulationin vivo. Similarly to alcohol, rats spontaneously drink ACD, whose presence is detected in the brain following chronic self-administration paradigm. ACD motivational properties are demonstrated by operant paradigms tailored to model several drug-related behaviors, such as induction and maintenance of operant self-administration, extinction, relapse and punishment resistance. ACD-related addictive-like behaviors are sensitive to pharmacological manipulations of dopamine and endocannabinoid signaling. Interestingly, the ACD-dopamine-endocannabinoids relationship also contributes to neuroplastic alterations of the NPYergic system, a stress-related peptide critically involved in alcohol abuse. The understanding of theménage-a-troisamong ACD, reward- and stress-related circuits holds promising potential for the development of novel pharmacological approaches aimed at reducing alcohol abuse.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sciences for Health Promotion and Mother and Child Care "G. D'Alessandro", University of Palermo Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Brancato
authors.affiliation: Department of Sciences for Health Promotion and Mother and Child Care "G. D'Alessandro", University of Palermo Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Gianluca
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lavanco
authors.affiliation: Department of Sciences for Health Promotion and Mother and Child Care "G. D'Alessandro", University of Palermo Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Angela
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cavallaro
authors.affiliation: Department of Sciences for Health Promotion and Mother and Child Care "G. D'Alessandro", University of Palermo Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Fulvio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Plescia
authors.affiliation: Department of Sciences for Health Promotion and Mother and Child Care "G. D'Alessandro", University of Palermo Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Carla
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cannizzaro
keywords: acetaldehyde; dopamine; endocannabinoids; operant behavior; stress