You can look at all the various factors, and the best predictor of whether you're going to be an alcoholic in adulthood is the age of initiation of use. So there may be something about early use that itself is changing the propensity to become addicted to alcohol or anything else. Spear has become one of the nation's and perhaps one of the world's leading experts on the relationship between neurotransmitters and behavior during development, as affected by drug abuse. Using rats, she has tested the consequences of prenatal cocaine in the subsequent development of brain and behavior in infancy and has expanded her research into the use and abuse of alcohol. While Spear's research shows that early exposure to cocaine alters the line between vulnerability and resiliency in regard to stress, she says that as a drug, alcohol is far more complicated than cocaine, as evidenced by how it impacts the brain.
Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter in the brain.
Though changes in its levels in the brain and subsequent alteration in its various receptors are implicated in a variety of commonly occurring neurological disorders, including schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, tardive dyskinesia, cocaine addiction, hypertension, and stress, dopamine systems are located only in specific brain regions. Cocaine, therefore, affects the brain as if it were a probe, Spear said. Alcohol, on the other hand, affects lots of different neurotransmitter systems and, in higher concentrations, affects membranes throughout the brain. Spear earned her bachelor's in psychology at Western Illinois University and then went on to the University of Florida where she earned her master's and PhD in psychology, both with minors in neuroscience. Reflecting on her motivations for returning to adolescent research this late in her career, Spear said the choice was clear.