Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a chronic relapsing disease, contributing to about 88,000 deaths in the United States each year (Stahre et al., 2014). Alcohol abuse produces neuroadaptations in specific brain circuits that are linked with behavioral indices of AUD, including escalating alcohol consumption, tolerance, dependence, and propensity to relapse after a period of abstinence (Becker and Ron, 2014). A central goal of AUD research is to identify the underlying neuroadaptations and molecular targets to discover new or repurposed drug treatments.
