Paternal cocaine-seeking motivation defines vulnerability to addiction of offspring by remodeling the regulatory network of neuroplasticity in VTA

To explore the mechanism of parental addiction experience affecting the neural system of offspring that decide the drug vulnerability, we improved the inheritance model of cocaine addiction, screened rats with high drug-seeking motivation and conjugated passively administered rats under more stringent scores, and performed RNA sequencing on the VTA brain region of their offspring. Furthermore, it was found that the Gabrg3 expression level of GABA neurons in the VTA brain region of offspring of rats with active high drug-seeking motivation was down-regulated, which led to the remodeling of the entire VTA transcription network, leading to high cocaine-seeking motivation in offspring.