Firing a Laser Into Your Brain Could Help Beat a Drug Addiction

An anonymous reader writes "The prelimbic region of the prefrontal cortex in the human brain is thought to play a key role in drug addiction, and researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse wanted to see if manipulating cells there had a positive or negative impact on that addiction. They got some rats addicted to cocaine but not before loading them up with light sensitive proteins called rhodopsins that were placed in their prefrontal cortex, attaching to the neurons there. By shining a tuned laser light on to the prefrontal cortex, it was possible to activate and deactivate the cells. By turning them on with the laser, the addictive behavior of the rats was removed. Turning them off, even in non-addicted rats, saw the addictive behavior return or introduced."

Comments

A laser to the brain

[Divebus]

Could also cure breathing.

Re:A laser to the brain

[Anonymous Coward]

Just looked at the paper and...Where is the scatter plot between lever presses and cocaine infusions??? NATURE EDITORS, DEMAND TO SEE THE ACTUAL DATA AND NOT JUST AVERAGES. Put it in the supplements if it is too complicated for the normal audience.

Re:A laser to the brain

[TapeCutter]

Redundant is appropriate, by definition the raw data is redundant after it has been properly analyzed, by definition a published paper is a "proper" analysis. It may be wrong but if it's the only analysis then by definition it is the best analysis we have. Einstein's famous 1905 paper was 3 pages long and had zero references, it was quickly recognized as a work of uncommon genius by other physicists.

The first thing they teach you in statistics is to create a scatter plot and just eyeball it for a one of several standard curves that MIGHT fit, the next step is averages (or some other metric) to see if your guess holds up to scrutiny. Thing is, eye-balling is not evidence and publishing only the calculated curve is normal practice. I don't have a Nature account so I can't easily confirm/deny the AC's claim that the raw data is unavailable (ironically because the AC did not publish his raw data). However since this looks like government funded research I think it's more likely the AC just eye-balled the paper and missed it.

Besides all that, a real scientist wouldn't bitch and moan if they couldn't find the raw data, they would just contact the author and ask politely, if that didn't work they would run their own experiments. At the end of the day the scientific way to overturn the results from one experiment is run one or more independent experiments that convincingly refute the original results.

To paraphrase one of the best science teachers to ever walk the earth - "The key to science is that if your beautifully presented, leather bound, iron-clad logic disagrees with experiments, it's wrong". - Feynman

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The original article clearly was not read. These rats had their genome changed to have more rhodopsins in their prefrontal cortex. This will not happen with humans in advance of any drug addiction issues (it would have to be done with the sperm/egg?). tldr; not going to happen.

Re:Really?

[Niedi]

Gene therapy is not particularly hard, and there's clinical trials and decades old cases where it have had success. Why is this myth propagated? Did the major fuckup and misconduct in the Jesse Gelsinger case really have that much publicity?

Though I guess, every religious nut, moral-code internet warrior, environmentalist nutcase and anti-GMO opinionist would of course latch onto this outlier case and present it as a rule rather than exception, because some delusion of purity is more important than saving and improving lives.

Disclaimer: I work in neuroscience and have used viral transfection quite a lot.

Myth? It's not trivial to get the infectous titer and purity of the virus right and it's even harder (read: almost impossible) to predict the exact expression levels that the virus will cause in an actual brain. Much less if such a potential overexpression of a non-native protein will mess up regular cell trafficking/function. Even if the protein is thought to be harmless (as is the case with Channelrhodopsin or Halorhodopsin), the sheer fact that the cell now has to produce, store and process large numbers of something it usually doesn't have can cause problems and take resources away from the normal function. Plus any virus that will stably integrate into the genome can cause all kinds of fuck up down the road since you don't know WHERE it will integrate and what other function it might overwrite.

Don't get me wrong, it is interesting, it is potentially very beneficial but I'd still be cautious when applying it in the brain (as opposed to applying it in muscle or skin cells) since adult neurogenesis isn't really happening much...

Firing a Laser Into Your Brain to cure addiction

[Gumbercules!!]

Would work for sure.... probably want to carefully define "cure" however.

Sure

[no-body]

Lobotomy was used once as a remedy for many things...

Folks changed after that. Some think to the better for society.

Depends on perspective.

Yes.... yeeeesss...

[RyanFenton]

From the Journal of Mad Science: A Cure for Addiction

Crazy they called me! CRAZY! But it is not _I_ who have surrendered the war on drugs! I know drugs - and the only real cure is PAIN. And the best PAIN? Direct laser to the brain!

Now, I know what you're all thinking! Dr. Madd, you're thinking, the brain doesn't have any pain receptors! You're thinking I just want to cure addiction with death! Ha! Death is no cure - it is FAILURE.

For you see - this is not some fleshy-burny laser, oh no! This is a laser set to trigger two particular threshold states in the neurotransmitter pathways... specifically, the pathways relating to heat, and cold.

And as any CHILD knows, both of those combined equate to the sensation of PAIN. Raw, sweet PAIN - far sweeter than any drug. Such an all-encompassing PAIN.

Such ecstasy an horror is unleashed, that the mind scrambles through everything it can, just to make sense of it. The end result is usually one of two things - a hyper-receptive state, where the ... subject is willing to accept instruction in thanks for the experience, or a simple silence that at least commits no more crimes such as seeking out drugs.

Such a cure! Were I a less modest man, I would call it a REVOLUTION in treatment!

I expect to be able to roll out full production within the next two to five years, and am highly interested in investments.

-Dr Maddeus Maddington Madd III, esq.