at greater risk for alcoholism than his buddies. Chronic tolerance is the decrease in sensitivity that develops as a result of repeated exposures to a drug and is measured in days or weeks rather than minutes [1]. Much remains to be established regarding the functional relationship between different classes of tolerance. What is clear is that to fully understand actions of alcohol on behavior, it will be necessary to identify the adaptations to alcohol within individual molecules. Establishing direct causality between effects of alcohol at the molecular/cellular and behavioral levels has proven elusive. Part of this difficulty stems from the fact that most behavioral tolerance studies have relied on relatively long-term alcohol exposure, whereas most ex vivo physiological preparations exhibit much shorter viability. One recent study benefited from the fact that behavioral tolerance to alcohol was readily observed a few minutes after drug injection, making it suitable for comparison with molecular/cellular data obtained in the same timeframe [3]. Remarkably, only a few minutes separated the onset of behavioral tolerance (e.g. ability to maintain balance) and alcohol effects on BK channels and action potential patterns in striatal neurons [3].
