Hunting for the brain's opioid addiction switch
New research by Steven Laviolette's research team at Western University is contributing to a better understanding of the ways opiate-class drugs modify brain circuits to drive the addiction cycle. Using rodent models of opiate addiction, Dr. Laviolette's research has shown that opiates affect pathways of associative memory formation in multiple ways, both at the level of anatomy (connections between neurons) and at the molecular levels (how molecules inside the brain affect these connections). The identification of these opiate-induced changes offers the best hope for developing more effective pharmacological targets and therapies to prevent or reverse the effect of opiate exposure and addiction. These results were presented at the 10th Annual Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, taking place May 29 to June 1 2016, in Toronto, Canada.