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Addiction is something that most of us believe can only really be cured with hard work, through therapy and rehabilitation of some kind.
But according to this new study, researchers may have found a way to solve alcoholism with the power of science.
Researchers from Texas A&M found that certain neurons could play into addiction. Specifically, there’s one part of your brain, called the dorsomedial striatum, which contains neurons that receive dopamine.
There’s D1, which encourages dopamine activation. But drinking causes D1 to be structurally altered, making those receptors much easier to activate. Then it continues this way. Once your dopamine receptors react more easily, then you just want to keep drinking. It leads to a craving, where the brain wants that easy, happy feeling back.
So of course, the solution is to make that reaction stop.
This study, done on mice who were exposed to alcohol, found that the mice who were exposed to alcohol had more mature protrusions in their D1, meaning it had been altered. And those who had altered D1 tended to drink more alcohol when they had the opportunity to do so.
But when they were given a drug that inhibited their D1 receptor, they didn’t want it as much.
And there’s the revolutionary discovery. If you inhibit that one part of the brain, you can inhibit the need for alcohol.
This discovery is one more step in the right direction of finding out how an addicted brain functions. If this were to work in a human clinical trial, it would be a game-changer.
