As mentioned above, Chung and colleagues [56] found that application of 20mM EtOH significantly increases the frequency ratio of cPSPs in BLA slices obtained from young animals (PD16–23); this increase is more pronounced in response to 40mM EtOH. The authors conclude that EtOH has dose-dependent effects on cPSP frequency that include both enhancement and inhibition, providing evidence for biphasic effects of EtOH in this brain region. As mentioned above, Lack and colleagues [57] have shown that EtOH acutely decreases kainite receptor-mediated EPSCs in the BLA in a concentration-dependent manner. Specifically, these authors found that kainite receptor-mediated synaptic currents were significantly decreased by 20mM EtOH (~26%) and further decreased by 40mM EtOH (~47%). However, low and medium doses of EtOH had no significant effect on NMDA receptor-mediated EPSCs in these experiments.
