![]() ![]() “This was necessary in order to transfer the euphoric and pleasurable characteristics associated with the drug over to a healthy stimulus - exercise.”Įxercise stimulates the growth of new neurons, which also may play a role in the successful brain rewiring that takes place, the researchers say. “By using the principles of learning and memory, we may have rewired the brain’s circuitry, activating a new clock - a form of plasticity - using the same stimulus that caused addiction in the first place, methamphetamine,” he says. “We created a new homeostatic state,” he says. That’s what happens when the SCN, the master circadian driver, becomes decoupled from the so-called “slave” oscillators that it controls, one of which is the methamphetamine-sensitive circadian oscillator or MASCO. “You are in a constant transition state and the same goes for these animals.” “It’s like being in a constant state of jet lag,” Dubocovich notes. ![]() “Metabolism and sleep cycles are all off kilter when someone is addicted,” Rawashdeh explains, “just like an animal whose master circadian clock has been removed.” ![]() To better understand the relationship between addiction and circadian rhythms, the researchers studied mice from whom the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a small region in the brain’s hypothalamus that acts as the master circadian clock, was removed. ![]() “We also know that the success of rehabilitation and prevention of relapse is linked to the degree of circadian disturbance in addicts.” “The circadian system is negatively impacted by drugs of addiction and it doesn’t necessarily recover,” Rawashdeh says. “Since various aspects of circadian rhythms are conserved among mammals, these findings may be directly translatable to humans,” says Margarita Dubocovich, senior author and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The UB researchers were interested in circadian rhythms because addiction upsets them, increasing craving for the drug and making relapse after treatment more likely. Clough, a postdoctoral researcher in the UB Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, is co-first author with Rawashdeh. “Our experiments show that it might be possible to use methamphetamine to treat meth addiction itself by associating drug usage with a stimuli that’s not harmful: exercise,” explains Oliver Rawashdeh, co-first author, formerly a postdoctoral researcher in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and now a lecturer and head of the Chronobiology lab in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Queensland in Australia. Researchers in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB based their hypothesis on the fact that both methamphetamine and running wheel activity target the same reward centers in the brain, which are also involved in daily synchronization of physiological rhythms. 12 in The FASEB Journal. The reason lies in the mechanism through which exercise and methamphetamine affect circadian rhythms, the roughly 24-hour cycles that drive all organisms. Exercise coupled with a regimen of methamphetamine could help addicts get clean, according to a pre-clinical study published Oct. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |