Addicting Mice To Light

Al writes "In an attempt to better understand how the reward system in the brain functions in people suffering from addiction, scientists at Stanford have created mice that are addicted to light. They engineered light-sensitive proteins to trigger signaling pathways in the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain that responds to pleasurable stimuli. They then connected a fiber-optic cable to this part of the brain and delivered a blast of light whenever the mice wandered into a 'reward chamber.' In previous experiments the mice have been given drugs like cocaine or amphetamine when they enter these rooms. The light treatment works in exactly the same way but lets the researchers very precisely control timing and dose of reward administered to the brain. The approach could also provide a way to probe receptors that cannot be accessed using existing drugs."

Comments

Why scary?

[reiisi]

The difference is (we would assume) that light is not poisonous.

If you didn't know that most of the addiction function is mental, and that the poison of choice is only useful in suppressing the conscious mind from questioning the mental addictive processes, you're not understanding the whole process.

(I'd mention something about something called repentance here, but I'm sure that would earn me a few -1 trolls.)