This article presents the proceedings of a symposium presented at the combined meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism, held in San Francisco, CA, in June 2002. The organizers and chairpersons were Subhash C. Pandey and Todd E. Thiele. The presentations were (1) Altered ethanol-induced sedation and ethanol drinking in mutant mice lacking specific NPY receptor, by Todd E. Thiele; (2) NPY in P and NP rats: polymorphism and mRNA expression, by Lucinda G. Carr; (3) The cAMP-dependent PKA in the central amygdala regulates alcohol intake through NPY gene, by Subhash C. Pandey; (4) Involvement of NPY in alcohol dependence: from animal models to human genetics, by Markus Heilig; and (5) Association of neuropeptide Y polymorphism with the occurrence of type 1 and type 2 alcoholism, by Erkki Ilveskoski.