# Behavioral Inflexibility and Dorsal Striatal AMPA Receptors

> **NIH NIH P60** · INDIANA UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLIS · 2021 · $180,837

## Abstract

Project Summary: Behavioral Inflexibility and Dorsal Striatal AMPA Receptors (BIDSAR)
Alcohol use problems may emerge from behavioral inflexibility, including difficulties processing information
about conflicting goals such as seeking alcohol's rewarding effects while avoiding its aversive ones, and/or
shifts towards habitual, stimulus-bound drinking. However, unknown is the extent to which behavioral
inflexibility predisposes an individual toward risky alcohol drinking, if chronic voluntary alcohol drinking
mediates shifts in behavioral flexibility, or by what neural mechanisms behavioral flexibility is mediated. In
short, there remains a critical gap in our understanding of the genetic and neural mechanisms underlying
inflexible alcohol drinking. There is a critical need to understand the mechanisms underlying both an innate
proclivity towards, and the effects of alcohol on, behavioral inflexibility, with a long-term goal of developing
novel treatments for excessive drinking behavior. The objectives of this application are to (1) to determine
whether innate differences in inflexible behavior generalize to consumption of other reinforcers (e.g. saccharin)
and to other cognitive domains (i.e., attentional set-shifting); (2) assess whether long-term alcohol drinking to
intoxication in susceptible populations facilitates inflexible and compulsive-like behavior; and (3) determine
whether either innate or acquired inflexible behavior is associated with altered AMPA receptor expression and
pharmacology in the dorsolateral versus dorsomedial striatum, consistent with the idea of heightened
glutamatergic tone. We will achieve the objectives by exploring these relationships using genetic mouse
models of excessive alcohol drinking. Our central hypothesis is that cognitive inflexibility (compulsivity) is both
an endophenotype and consequence of chronic alcohol consumption, mediated by altered prefrontal cortical
glutamatergic input to the dorsal striatum.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10064091
- **Project number:** 5P60AA007611-34
- **Recipient organization:** INDIANA UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLIS
- **Principal Investigator:** Stephen Lee Boehm
- **Activity code:** P60 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $180,837
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** — → —

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10064091

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10064091, Behavioral Inflexibility and Dorsal Striatal AMPA Receptors (5P60AA007611-34). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10064091. Licensed CC0.

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