Addicts’ brains show a shared chemical deficit that may explain why they struggle to control their drug use. This research uses PET brain scans to investigate the brain mechanisms behind opiate and alcohol addiction, focusing on two key neurotransmitters: GABA, which calms the brain, and endorphins, which drive the brain’s pleasure system. The team has already found that people with different addictions may share a GABA deficit, and they now want to test whether the same mechanisms apply to non-drug addictions like gambling. If confirmed, these findings could reveal a general brain-based vulnerability to addiction, opening the door for pharmaceutical companies to develop new treatments that target these specific chemical pathways. This is fundamental science—it does not deliver a new therapy tomorrow—but it pinpoints the biological levers that future drugs might pull. Similar discoveries about neurotransmitter systems have previously led to treatments for depression and Parkinson’s disease.
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Addiction is a widespread problem in our society and globally. This series of investigations continues our work in the study of 2 of the commonest and most harmful addictions, opiates (heroin) and alcohol. Many factors influence the entrance to addiction, its maintenance and the relapse to drugs in people who have abstained. We are studying in detail one of these factors, the brain mechanisms behind addiction, and in particular what brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) are involved. We have found that people with different addictions may have a shared deficit in the key neurotransmitter that calms the brain (GABA) which may explain why they have trouble controlling their desire to take drugs. Also we have evidence that the brain?s own pleasure system, the endorphins, may play a role in addiction. The current research program follows up these leads to see if they may also be important in an addiction that does not involve drugs ? gambling ? to see if they have a more general role in addiction. From these findings we have already identified potential avenues for development of new treatments and we hope that further discoveries we make will encourage companies to develop new research into treatments. We are a unique group in the UK because we have been using brain scanning (PET neuroimaging) techniques in addicts and in healthy volunteers to look at brain mechanisms for some years. Our group is comprised of doctors who treat addicts, specialists in PET and MRI imaging, and psychopharmacologists with expertise in drugs of addiction and brain receptors. We have been fortunate to interest many of the clients we meet in our day-to-day practice, who have volunteered in our studies and allowed us to scan their brains, and this interest continues. We are experienced in and committed to publishing our results to the scientific community by presenting at conferences and writing in journals. We hold regular meetings with organisations helping addicts in their recovery. We communicate a lot with to the public through events such as science festivals and public science events, and through the media by taking part in radio and TV programmes about addiction.
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