Chunk #27 — Mechanisms of Neurodegeneration Related to Alcohol’s Effects on Neuroimmune Signaling in the Brain — Role of Hyperexcitability and Excitotoxicty
Another mechanism through which chronic ethanol induces hyperexcitability involves neuroimmune inhibition of glial glutamate transporters (Zou and Crews 2005). Thus, in brain-slice cultures, ethanol potentiates excitotoxicity by causing blockade of the molecules that normally remove glutamate from the synapse into glial cells and may perhaps even induce glutamate release from those cells (Zou and Crews 2006, 2010).
