Development of Cell-Type-Specific Viral Vectors to Tease Apart the Neural Circuitry that Contributes to Drug Addiction

Although our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie drug addiction have advanced significantly over the past few decades, the lack of efficacious treatments for this debilitating disorder suggest that there is much work still to be done to clarify the role of specific cells and circuits in the process that govern addiction. In recent years, new technologies have been developed that are now allowing researchers to express transgenes in selective cell populations in the brain as well as to modulate the activity of these cell populations selectively. This chapter provides a detailed overview of how cell-type-specific viral vectors can be developed and used in order to parse out the neural circuits that underlie addiction.