Interventions to reduce drug use is of great interest to addiction researchers. Particularly, biomedically targeting neural circuits driving the motivation to seek drugs of abuse is of interest to be able to prevent substance use neurologically. Environmental cues often stimulate a person’s motivation to seek the rewarding substance of abuse, therefore identifying a biomedical intervention that reduces this effect could be of use addition researchers. Here my team and I discovered a biomedical intervention that reduces cue-induced reward-seeking behavior and could be used in future translational studies. This work was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
A method of modulating motivation for addiction researchers.
problem
What is the human problem motivating addiction researchers?
Overdose deaths are increasing exponentially over the past 5 years in the U.S.
Researchers want to create interventions for substance use disorders that target the neural circuitry that drives substance use disorders as an additional or alternative strategy to treat addiction and abate substance use illness and death.
What are the barriers addiction researchers are facing and how can we help?
Methods of modulating specific brain targets are new and can be invasive, therefore basic research needs to be used to see what methods should be further pursued as translation and effective neural interventions.
goals
Find a neuromodulation method that successfully reduces reward-seeking in subjects.
test neuromodulation strategies of varying invasiveness.
define the specific behavioral and methodological components that are effective in successful interventions.
approach
Use proven methods of neuromodulation of varying invasiveness during a behavioral paradigm of reward-seeking.
implement two different neuromodulation interventions.
quantitatively measure behavioral outputs of motivation during A/B testing of reward predictive cues and interventions.
qualitatively observe behavior during interventions to assess off-target effects of interventions.
results
Persistent, mildly invasive, neuromodulation intervention of specific brain target did not alter behavioral measures of motivation.
Subjects maintained baseline cue-induced reward-seeking during intervention.
Temporally specific, fairly invasive, neuromodulation intervention of specific brain target reduced behavioral measures of motivation.
Subjects decreased cue-induced reward-seeking in response to neuronal inactivation during reward cue presentation.
Subjects decreased motivation to reward-seek in response to neuronal inactivation during reward cue presentation.
benefits
A public manuscript for researchers to utilize our neuromodulation, behavioral and statistical methods to build on these findings.
Quantitative open source code of A/B analysis.
Proof that the brain target of interest directly impacts behavioral outputs necessary for reward/drug-seeking behavior.