Memory and Addiction
An exciting new study has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience by Washington State University researchers. They indicate that they have found a mechanism in the brain that enables the powerful role of memory in the process of drug addiction. This is important and because their discovery opens a new area of research geared at discovering some type of therapy that could alter or stop this mechanism in addiction; making drug addiction less addictive.
Turning off the tool that creates these powerful memories will hopefully lessen the impact and content of the memory – thereby decreasing the motivation for relapse and addiction. Memories associated with drug use definitely drive the impulses behind drug addiction. The brain reinforces memories, and in so doing, gives them emotional weight. The result of the memories being reinforced is a perfect list of what guides and directs the basic decisions.
Science Daily reported on this study and indicates, “drug use creates memories so powerful they hijack the system, turning physiology into pathology.” They indicate that the researchers said that memories are intensified and heighted with drug use.
They further reported that Barbara Sorg, a professor of neuroscience at Washington State University, Vancouver and Megan Slaker, a doctoral candidate in neuroscience, “gave male rats cocaine in a specific setting, a drug cage, conditioning them to associate the experience with that place. With each new experience, the rats would draw memories of previous experiences there, reconsolidate them with new information and in effect reinforce the memory. With one group of rats, the researchers removed structures called perineuronal nets that surround a group of neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex, a high-order area of the brain important for attention, cognition and inhibitory behavior, as well as learning and memory. The nets are believed to regulate the ability to strengthen or weaken as memories are recalled and reconsolidated.
Indeed, the rats with their nets removed were less interested in being in the drug cage.”
“When we manipulated them and removed these nets from the prefrontal cortex, we saw that our animals had poorer memories,” said Slaker. “That was a very novel finding since no one else has ever looked at these structures within the prefrontal cortex in relation to a drug memory.”
Sorg notes that the procedure probably did not erase the drug memory but blunted its emotional power. The finding opens the possibility of developing a way to target, for example, a protein of the perineuronal nets, to counteract cocaine’s influence over memories.”
These findings from the Washington State University study indicate that the procedure that was undertaken most likely did not erase the drug memory completely, but perhaps diminished it emotional power. Hopefully, narrowing down what allows for emotional strength in memories or weakening memories in the brain can help to lessen addiction to harmful things, and the power these chemicals have over memories.
Sources: sciencedaily.com, wsu.edu