New research identifies fewer than 500 neurons in the brain responsible for suppressing binge drinking, promising new avenues for treating alcohol addiction.
New research led by Gilles E. Martin, an associate professor of neurobiology at UMass Chan Medical School, has identified fewer than 500 neurons within the human brain (among the billions of neurons) that play a critical role in suppressing binge drinking.
Published on June 10 in Nature Neuroscience, the findings illuminate previously unknown neural mechanisms governing binge drinking behaviors and pave the way for new therapeutic strategies combatting alcohol dependency.
“It’s really hard to comprehend how only a few neurons can have such a profound effect on behavior,” Martin, who is also a member of the Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Institute at UMass Chan, said in a news release. “This is exciting because we are starting to understand how only a handful of cells are involved in very specific behaviors. Truly, this study is about finding a needle in a haystack.”
Alcohol addiction remains a pressing global health issue, contributing to millions of fatalities directly and indirectly through more than 200 related diseases and injuries. While past studies pointed to regions of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex in mitigating excessive alcohol consumption, none had dissected the exact neuronal circuits involved.
Martin and his team employed cutting-edge techniques — fiber photometry, optogenetics, electrophysiology and single-cell transcriptomics — to isolate a specific neuronal ensemble responsible for curbing binge drinking behavior.
“The golden age of neuroscience we entered a decade ago is now accelerating,” added Martin. “With all the tools available to us, we are now able to do things that 10 or even five years ago were unimaginable. There are billions of neurons in the brain. Without these technologies, we wouldn’t be able to detect this activity among all those cells; it would fly under the radar because there would be so few cells active, we wouldn’t be able to see them.”
Through extensive experimentation using advanced mouse models, the team pinpointed a small cluster of neurons that become active in response to binge drinking stimuli. These neurons were tagged with a fluorescent protein visible through fiber photometry, allowing real-time observation.
Using optogenetics, the researchers could then manipulate these neurons, enabling them to turn them on or off and observe subsequent behavioral changes.
“We know that in some cases binge drinking can lead to alcohol dependence,” added Martin. “This area of the brain appears to be intimately involved with suppressing that behavior. It could be that misfiring in this mechanism is involved in alcohol dependence, and reactivating it could be a potential target for therapeutics.”
As neuroscience tools and techniques continue to evolve, the ability to observe and manipulate even small subsets of neurons could yield profound insights. Martin envisions the possibility that as few as a couple of dozen neurons might govern binge drinking suppression, with identifying these cells being a critical step towards targeted treatments for alcohol addiction.
Source: UMass Chan Medical School