Previously, we determined that in two mammalian brain regions important in alcohol abuse and addiction, the supraoptic nucleus (SON), and the striatum, the BK channel develops tolerance to alcohol (Knott et al., 2000;Knott et al., 2002;Pietrzykowski et al., 2004). In neurons of both regions, this BK tolerance is manifested as decreased alcohol sensitivity and reduced BK channel density (Pietrzykowski et al., 2004, Martin et al., 2004).
