Innovative Study Reveals How Addiction Hijacks Brain Functions

Mount Sinai and Rockefeller University researchers have discovered how cocaine and morphine disrupt brain processes linked to natural rewards, offering new insights into addiction and potential treatments.on April 18, provides new insights into the brain’s neural mechanisms involved in drug addiction. This breakthrough could enhance fundamental research, clinical practices, and the development of potential treatments for addiction.

The study focused on identifying convergent mechanisms of addiction in mouse models across two different classes of drugs: cocaine, a psychostimulant, and morphine, an opioid. This groundbreaking work required the amalgamation of a highly interdisciplinary team, organized by Dr. Nestler and long-time collaborator Jeffrey M. Friedman, MD, PhD, Marilyn M. Simpson Professor at The Rockefeller University, Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and co-senior author of the study.

To that end, the research team plans to dig deeper into the cellular biology behind addiction neuroscience to better characterize molecular pathways that could be critical to basic research and, eventually, clinical practice. “We’ve known for decades that natural rewards, like food, and addictive drugs can activate the same brain region,” says Dr. Friedman. “But what we’ve just learned is that they impact neural activity in strikingly different ways. One of the big takeaways here is that addictive drugs have pathologic effects on these neural pathways, that are distinct from, say, the physiologic response to eating a meal when you are hungry or drinking a glass of water when you are thirsty.

Source: Tech Daily Report (techdailyreport.net)

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