Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 May 1.
Published in final edited form as: Alcohol. 2012 Mar 25;46(3):217–223. doi: 10.1016/j.alcohol.2011.11.007

Figure 3.

Figure 3

Effects of challenge injections of nicotine (200 μM) into the posterior ventral tegmental area VTA (pVTA) on extracellular dopamine levels (averaged peak values of extracellular dopamine levels during the 0–40 min period after the initiation of the challenge injection) in the nucleus accumbens shell following repeated exposure of the pVTA to either aCSF or 200 mg% ethanol. ‘aCSF-Nic’: nicotine induced dopamine release in aCSF-pretreated rats; ‘EtOH-Nic’: nicotine induced dopamine release in ethanol-pretreated rats. For simplicity, baseline levels from only one group were presented because baseline levels were almost identical in the two groups. The insert shows time-course effects of microinjections of nicotine on dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens shell after pretreatments. Since there was no significant differences between groups receiving either aCSF or 200 mg% ethanol pretreatments (F1, 16 = 2.16, p = 0.16), data were collapsed across groups. * p < 0.05, significantly greater than baseline levels.