PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

6-Jan-2014

Contact: Ellen Goldbaum goldbaum@buffalo.edu 716-645-4605 University at Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. Researchers at the University at Buffalo have found a way to change alcohol drinking behavior in rodents, using the emerging technique of optogenetics, which uses light to stimulate neurons.

Their work could lead to powerful new ways to treat alcoholism, other addictions, and neurological and mental illnesses; it also helps explain the underlying neurochemical basis of drug addiction.

The findings, published in November in Frontiers in Neuroscience, are the first to demonstrate a causal relationship between the release of dopamine in the brain and drinking behaviors of animals. Research like this, which makes it possible to map the neuronal circuits responsible for specific behaviors, is a major focus of President Obama's Brain Research for Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative, known as BRAIN.

In the experiments, rats were trained to drink alcohol in a way that mimics human binge-drinking behavior.

First author Caroline E. Bass, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences explains: "By stimulating certain dopamine neurons in a precise pattern, resulting in low but prolonged levels of dopamine release, we could prevent the rats from binging. The rats just flat out stopped drinking," she says.

Bass's co-authors are at Wake Forest University, where she worked previously.

Interestingly, the rodents continued to avoid alcohol even after the stimulation of neurons ended, she adds.

See the article here:
Stimulating brain cells stops binge drinking, animal study finds

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