Taken together, all of these data indicate exposure to ethanol during adolescence does indeed alter multiple behaviors relative to ethanol-naïve animals. These data support the hypothesis that the adolescent brain is sensitive to insult induced by ethanol exposure during adolescence and these changes are manifested behaviorally as increased vulnerability to the effects of ethanol in young adulthood. However, there are several areas in the brain that may be uniquely susceptible to the long-term effects of early ethanol exposure, including the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, which is one of the key systems that mediate the behavioral changes we have observed in our work. We focus our neurochemical studies on the mesolimbic dopaminergic system given its involvement in reward, attention, novelty preference and salience.
