9:54 a.m., March 25, 2010----Prof. Jill Becker of the University of Michigan will speak on the topic “Sex, Drugs and Dopamine: Influences of Development and Hormones on Sex Differences in Drug Abuse” at 4 p.m., Wednesday, April 14, in Room 116 Gore Hall.

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The talk is part of a colloquium sponsored by the University of Delaware Department of Psychology.

Becker is the Patricia Y. Gurin Collegiate Professor of Psychology and research professor at the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute at the University of Michigan. Also, she is president of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences.

The presentation abstract notes, “There are sex differences in many motivated behaviors, including the motivation to engage in sexual behavior, the motivation to take drugs of abuse, and the motivation to engage in parental behavior. In females, rapid effects of estradiol on the ascending dopamine (DA) system enhance the female's motivation to engage in these behaviors. These effects of estradiol can be studied behaviorally and neurochemically when looking at the response to psychomotor stimulant drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine.

“For example, we have found that female rats exhibit greater behavioral sensitization to cocaine, acquire cocaine self-administration more rapidly, and work harder to receive cocaine than males. More recently we have been investigating how developmental events, such as prenatal stress, impact expression of sex differences in drug taking behavior in the adult as well as drug taking behavior in the adolescent rat. Estradiol enhances these sex differences in females.”