Fighting Cocaine Addiction

Ever since its resurgence in the 1970s cocaine use has been embedded in western culture. It is well known that cocaine is one of the most addictive and deadly drugs in the world. Recently, Dr. Loweth from the Department of Neuroscience, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine, published her research about a specific glutamate receptor (mGluR) that may play an important role in drug addiction and relapse. They work by affecting the synthesis of another receptor (CP-AMPARs) that is expressed on the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain that is critical for cocaine craving. When subjects withdraw from cocaine use, CP-AMPAR receptors increase causing intensified cocaine craving in the presence of an external cue (a smell, location, or event that is associated with cocaine). The mGluR receptors inhibit the synthesis of CP-AMPAR receptors and thus, as the research team concluded, activation of mGluR can prevent cocaine relapse by lowering the receptors responsible for the intense cocaine cravings produced by external cues.

            In 2013 scientific article reported the findings of Billy Chen, then of the National Institutes of Health, and his colleagues. The researchers used electric current to stimulate the prelimbic cortex that communicates with other areas involved in drug-seeking behaviors. They found that the neurons in cocaine addicted rats, were less likely to fire in response to the electric current when compared with rats that hadn’t taken cocaine. They focused on a group of “sluggish” neurons that seem to be causing the compulsive behavior. When these neurons were activated, the compulsive behavior diminished dramatically in the cocaine addicted rats. These sluggish neurons seem to play a similar role at the prelimbic cortext as the mGluR recptors do in the nucleus accumbens. Do they work by similar mechanisms? Do they affect different aspects of drug addictions? The only way to find out is by studying these systems in more detail. One thing is for certain, they create optimism and raise hope that one day drug addiction may be cured.

References

Kollipara, P. (2013). Cocaine addiction comes to light. Society for Science & the Public, 16.

Loweth, J. A., Tseng, K. Y., & Wolf, M. E. (2013). Using metabotropic glutamate receptors to modulate cocaine’s synaptic and behavioral effects: mGluR1 finds a niche. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 500-506.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23599283.pdf?acceptTC=true
https://luc.app.box.com/s/4c031c26bsh2bj3619si/1/2926647027/26012774523/1