Dr. Arnold Gutierrez

Department of Psychology

Significance of the work

The lab's current project involves studying the acute and long-term effects of drug exposure through various routes of administration and across different stages of life, using the rat as a pre-clinical animal model. At present, a major focus is on determining the age-specific effects of adolescent opioid vapor exposure on measures of anxiety, pain-related behavior, and cognitive function. The objective of these studies is to better understand how the underlying changes that drive drug-induced behavioral effects contribute to enhanced drug susceptibility and exacerbated drug-taking later in life.

 Dr. Gutierrez's work aims to understand how drug exposure earlier in life results in negative outcomes that are associated with drug misuse and substance use disorders later in life. Therefore, the described studies are directly related to addiction.

Our research address the following questions:

• Does drug exposure in adolescence lead to different long-term outcomes compared with drug exposure that occurs in adulthood?
• Does adolescent exposure to opioid drugs enhance drug-taking later in life?
• What roles do drug-induced changes in anxiety, pain-sensitivity, and cognitive function play in drug-taking behavior?
• What are the route-specific effects of drug vapor inhalation?

Methods:

Dr. Gutierrez utilizes a combination of pharmacological, behavioral, molecular, and neurochemical approaches to assess the long-term effects of drug exposure across different stages of life. Students will have the opportunity to work with preclinical models of anxiety- and pain-related behavior, drug sensitivity, learning and memory, and drug self-administration by way of inhalation. Students may also have the opportunity to learn to analyze and interpret data, perform stereotaxic surgery, collect tissue, and assess proteins of interest using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) techniques.