Researchers use lasers to regulate cocaine-seeking behavior in rats.
(Credit: B.Chen/NIDA)
Researchers who shined a laser light in a certain region of the brain -- stimulating the area associated with decision-making and impulse control -- were able to zap what they call "cocaine seeking" behaviors in addicts.
And while their work was on rats, their hope is that a similar technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS, currently used to improve symptoms of depression) will work on humans as well.
"When we turn on a laser light in the prelimbic region of the prefrontal cortex, the compulsive cocaine seeking is gone," Antonello Bonci, the scientific director of the intramural research program at the NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), where the work was done, said in a news release.
Studies on both rats and humans have already shown extremely low activity in the prefrontal cortex in those who are compulsively addicted to cocaine. For this study, published this week in the journal Nature, lead author Billy Chen of NIDA and colleagues teste... [Read more]
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