Neuroscientists Discover how to Reverse Addiction in Cocaine Addicts, Molecular Process Targets Brain

A new study might shed some light on preventing or even reversing the addiction of cocaine addicts.

Scientists have recently discovered, according to Michigan State University, that a molecular process in the brain triggered by cocaine use can be targeted for treatment to help addicts.

Reporting in the Journal of Neuroscience, Michigan State University neuroscientist A.J. Robison and colleagues said they believe cocaine alters the nucleus accumbens, the brain's pleasure center that responds to stimuli such as food, sex and drugs.

"Understanding what happens molecularly to this brain region during long-term exposure to drugs might give us insight into how addiction occurs," said Robison, assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and the Neuroscience Program.

Researchers note that as cocaine causes cells in the nucleus accumbens to boost productions of two proteins-one associated with addiction and the other related to learning-the proteins have a reciprocal relationship and increase each other's production and stability in the cells. Robinson confirms that this results in a snowball effect that creates a feed-forward loop.

Raising production of the protein linked to addiction made animals behave as if they were exposed to cocaine even though they were not. Hence, re-looping the protein prevents the animals from learning of the addiction.

 "At every level that we study, interrupting this loop disrupts the process that seems to occur with long-term exposure to drugs," said Robison, who conducted the study as a postdoctoral fellow at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City before joining the faculty at MSU.

Robison said the study was particularly compelling because it found signs of the same feed-forward loop in the brains of people who died while addicted to cocaine.

"The increased production of these proteins that we found in the animals exposed to drugs was exactly paralleled in a population of human cocaine addicts," he said. "That makes us believe that the further experiments and manipulations we did in the animals are directly relevant to humans."