Animal models of acute alcohol exposure have been instrumental in elucidating our understanding of the molecular actions of alcohol with regard to excitatory and inhibitory transmission in the mammalian cortex (see Figure 1A for a summary). GluNs are one of the main components of excitatory transmission in the hippocampus (as well as the cortex at large) and are critical for learning and memory (123). The receptors are comprised of four subunits, two obligatory GluN1 subunits, and two additional subunits, which can be any of GluN2A-D or GluN3A-B. Evidence suggests that the 2A and 2B subunits, expressed in high density in the hippocampus, are particularly sensitive to alcohol’s inhibitory effects (124–127). Further, early evidence suggests that alcohol dose-dependently inhibits GluN-dependent current in cells (8) by decreasing the time the channel spends open (128).
