Opioid receptors are proteins that, when stimulated, regulate cell function and various behaviors and responses such as analgesia and euphoria .
There are three types of opioid receptors; delta, kappa, and mu.
Heroin, a semi synthetic derivative of morphine, crosses the blood-brain barrier much more readily than morphine due to its increased water-repellency .
Once in the brain, heroin is rapidly converted to morphine, which binds to the mu opioid receptor and results in a euphoric effect.

My name is Kate Keith and I am a rising senior at West Forsyth high school. After completing high school I plan to attend UNC Carolina to hopefully become a nurse. It is because of these aspirations that I am standing before you today. When I first saw this program in the announcements I knew I had to participate. This would not only be an opportunity for me to place something impressive on my transcript, but an experience of a lifetime to further expand my knowledge of the scientific world. Having said this, it is my great pleasure to present to you my newly-acquired knowledge.

I was worried about nothing. Besides entering some data and cleaning some extra cages my week was as usual. This week we continued to administer the beta-fna to the rest of my rats. Only this time we administered 0.5 nanamols to the rest(2) of rats in the group to complete that test. The rats increased their heroin intake by about an average of 12 doses. This indicates that that dosage of beta-fna has a large effect on the rats intake increasing it by over 50 percent. This it what we are looking for to show that the beta-fna is involved in modulating heroin self-administration to a greater extent in animals with naturopathic pain compared to normal animals. On Tuesday I accidentally switched two of the rats and then ran them. Thank god Nancy caught it on Wednesday so I could switch them back before running them again. Today is cleaning day. Next week Nancy told me that I can try and do some operations and dissections on the rats that are about to be euphonized. I'm extremely excited about that!

We got some new animals in this week. I made identification cards for them and then put them in the dark colony. I'm scared. lol. Suzy left for vacation so for the next week I'm going to be doing my stuff and Nancy's so Nancy can take over Susie's stuff. I hope I don't screw anything up. It will be hard but I'll get through it. We administered the beta-fna to 4 of the rats on Monday. Supposedly they have already done the projects where they were trying to see/produce an effect on the rats intake of the heroin. For my project Dr. Martin is trying to find the smallest dose of beta-fna he can administer to the rats which will have an effect on the rats intake of the heroin. I'm not exactly sure yet why he wants to find the smallest dose which will effect their intake but I think its something about how say for people, you don't want some one taking 500 milligrams of Tylenol when they could take 100 milligrams and it have the same effect as far as what your taking it for. The 500 milligrams would be way too much and would cause side effects such as drowsiness more so than the 100 milligram dose. I also began running to brand new rats. I hate the computer. It crashed yesterday so I lost all of my afternoon guys data. what a bummer. We gotta get it fixed. I hope it doesn't happen again.

I am 17. As a young woman I make mistakes and will surely continue to make plenty of them throughout my years. What better way to learn the ways of the world than to make a mistake and then learn from it. But better yet, to actually admit the mistake was yours and not repeat it again. Therefore I do not regret any mistakes I have made for they make me a better brighter woman.

This week has gone extremely well. After talking to Dr. Martin on Friday, I now know exactly what I am doing, why I am doing it, and can even explain it to other people. I am actually now really interested in what we are doing because if successful, our project will be able to disprove all the stigmatisms that come with taking heroin even just as a medication such as people who use heroin as medication are drug abusers just like adicts which is absolutely the oposite. About 99 percent of medicinal heroin users today claim that they feel no euphoria or elation, only pain relief. Because of this we are trying to prove that the brain of someone normal and that of someone with nerve injury is physically and structurally different. To prove this we take a rat, cut and incision in the small of its back and tie the nerves together around the 5th and 6th lumbar vertebrae. This creates chronic back pain for the rat. We then put and intravenous catheter in the jugular vein for direct administration of drugs. Once a day we run the rats in their chambers for four hours each. There is a lever in the chamber that the rat has to push to self administer heroin, which we assume is being taken by the rat for pain relief. After the rat has self administered for a while and is doing well, we introduce a new drug to the rat through cannulas which go directly to the amygdala, the part of the brain we believe is responsible for pain control and sensory. This new drug, beta-fna, will bind to the opioid receptors in the brain, which the heroin, when taken, binds to. The beta-fna will actually block the effects of the heroin on the rats. Therefore when the rat takes the heroin it will feel no effect as if it hadn't even taken it. If the rat altogether stops taking the heroin or start to double the amount usually taken, then we will know that the rat was taking the drugs for the pain relief.