Ronald See, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Physiology and Neuroscience,
Medocal University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC.

Phone: (843) 792-2487
Fax: (843) 792-4423
Email: seere@musc.edu

Education:

University of California, Berkeley, CA - B.A. Psychology, 1984
University of California, Los Angeles, CA - M.A. Psychobiology, 1985
University of California, Los Angeles, CA - Ph.D. Psychobiology, 1989

Current research:

Neural substrates of addiction and relapse : Our laboratory uses animal models of chronic psychostimulant and opiate self-administration to study the role of specific brain nuclei in mediating drug-taking and drug-seeking behavior. A particular focus is the role of corticolimbic function in regulating the learned associations that are critical in the relapse to compulsive drug abuse.
Sex differences in addiction : This line of research is focused on determining sex differences in a model of relapse to cocaine-seeking behavior produced by various stimuli. Further studies are using this model to examine sex differences in the response to possible pharmacotherapies for relapse.
Neural basis of antipsychotic drug effects : This research is directed towards understanding the mechanisms of short- and long-term antipsychotic drug action in the brain. These studies involve administration of a variety of drugs that affect basal ganglia function as measured by changes in neurotransmitter release via intracranial microdialysis.

Recent publications:

See RE, Berglind WJ, Krentz L, Meshul CK (2002) Convergent evidence from microdialysis and presynaptic immunolabeling for the r egulation of GABA release in the globus pallidus following clozapine or haloperidol administration in rats. Journal of Neurochemistry 82(1):172-180.

Fuchs RA, See RE, Middaugh LD (2003) Conditioned stimulus-induced reinstatement of extinguished cocaine seeking in C57BL/6 mice: A mouse model of drug relapse. Brain Research 973:99-106.

See RE, McLaughlin J, Fuchs RA (2003) Muscarinic receptor blockade of the basolateral amygdala disrupts acquisition, but not expression, of conditioned reinstatement of cocaine-seeking behavior in rats. Neuroscience 117:477-483.

McLaughlin J, See RE (2003) Selective inactivation of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the basolateral amygdala attenuates conditioned-cued reinstatement of extinguished cocaine-seeking behavior in rats. Psychopharmacology 168:57-65.

Ledford CC, Fuchs RA, See RE (2003) Potentiated reinstatement of cocaine-seeking behavior following d -amphetamine infusion into the basolateral amygdala. Neuropsychopharmacology 28(10):1721-1729.