(Neuroscience News) A five-year, $2.59 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will allow a psychology professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York to study the mechanisms of addiction.
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by Staff Writer, November 2nd, 2021
Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Psychology Anushree Karkhanis, along with Drexel University Associate Professor Jessica, received a five-year, $2.59 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for their project: “Mechanisms of rostrocaudal differences in accumbal kappa opioid receptor effects on ethanol drinking.”
“This project allows us to look at specific neuron populations and how this particular receptor that we’re studying modulates two different populations of neurons within an area of the brain,” Karkhanis said.
Karkhanis first began researching the up-regulation of accumbal kappa opioid receptors during a post-doctorate fellowship at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. Many labs in the United States, including her own, have shown that this receptor is upregulated, meaning that it increases its function after alcohol exposure at various ages.
Initially implicated in addiction processing in animal models, recent studies have shown that opioid receptors have solid connections to addiction in human populations, too. For example, the drug naltrexone — most commonly associated with treating opioid overdoses, but also used to combat alcohol use disorder — blocks all of the opioid receptors in the brain.
The research project centers on the rostral (anterior) and caudal (posterior) sub-regions of the shell of the nucleus accumbens, which is involved in emotion- and reinforcement-related processing. The hypothesis is that the two sub-regions of the shell respond very differently to pharmacological manipulations of the kappa opioid receptor and alcohol use.
The brain rewards behavior with dopamine, but the organic chemical doesn’t play the game alone; every neurotransmitter system is involved to some extent. Karkhanis’ research targets the serotonin system, which is involved in mood, emotions and stress, along with dopamine. Researchers believe that kappa opioid receptors modulate both of these neurotransmitter systems, but they don’t yet know the mechanism and whether each system is regulated differently.
In this five-year project, Karkhanis and Barson hope to answer this question, and to see how the modulation of neurotransmitter systems changes when an organism is exposed to alcohol. They will use rats in their research, and a combination of micro-injections and viral technologies to manipulate specific neuron populations. Karkhanis’ lab also uses fast-scan cyclic voltammetry, an electroanalytical method, to measure the release of neurotransmitters.
The idea behind the project sparked at a conference, where Barson had invited Karkhanis to speak at a panel; in her talk, the latter touched upon rostro-caudal differences in dopamine transmission following kappa opioid receptor activation.
Afterward, they chatted over coffee about the data that Barson was seeing in her lab after one of her students saw opposing effects after conducting microinjections activating kappa opioid receptors along the rostro-caudal axis in the nucleus accumbens. Barson’s data worked well with the data produced by Karkhanis.
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Brain chemistry is more complicated than the english language. It is thought to drive itself while we are along for the ride. I reject this concept. The brain is dirivative of thought. Memories drive emotion, the experiencer may refuse to acknowledge this, or be honestly unaware due to a lack of training by those who instructed said brain during development. You can tell a Buddhist Monk that they can not heal or levitate, or perform other “Biblical miracles” (see Jesus). But that doesnt change things for the Monk no matter how sure you are. But from that position, you certainly can not heal or levitate. A monk’s brain is not made up of different stuff, just different thoughts. Why can’t they cure cancer? Because only you can cure cancer. The ONLY truly efficable cure.for every disease in the book? “Placebo” (thoughts) works every time. -Fact
Li Hongzhi mentions in “Fa Teaching at the 2019 New York Fa Conference” a cacodemon, or evil spirit, that could be called an addiction clone.
https://www.falundafa.org/eng/falun-dafa-recent-writings.html
The first thing about dealing with someone who has been drinking is to understand that they are not the person they are when they’re sober. Whatever good sense and reason they might have in the cold light of day, this sensibility will desert them after a few drinks. Trying to talk to someone under the influence of alcohol is difficult, whether they’re a fun, sociable kind of drinker or a moody and aggressive drunk. I’m not an expert in this matter, but I can recommend a book, which was very helpful for me – net-bossorg/how-to-help-an-alcoholic-you-love