Cocaine and alcohol hijack the brain’s memory system, turning casual drug use into compulsive habits that persist even when people want to stop. This matters because addiction is a chronic-relapsing disorder with devastating personal and societal costs—alcohol misuse alone costs the UK £25.1 billion every year. Current treatments are limited, and relapse triggered by drug-associated cues in the environment remains a major barrier to recovery. The researchers aim to understand the neural transition from voluntary drug seeking to compulsive, loss-of-control behaviour, using rats to model this process for both cocaine and alcohol. If successful, this work could lead to new medications that weaken the power of drug-related memories, making it easier for people to maintain abstinence and resist relapse. The research is fundamental science: it probes the molecular and neurochemical mechanisms of memory reconsolidation—the process by which retrieved memories become vulnerable to disruption. Similar fundamental work on memory has already opened paths to treating PTSD. A deeper understanding of how addictive memories become entrenched could ultimately yield therapies that target the brain’s habit circuits directly, reducing the burden on individuals, families, and the NHS.
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Drug addiction is a major form of psychiatric disorder that also places an enormous burden on society through its repercussions on crime and health care provision. There is a major need to develop new treatments for drug addiction and to identify who may be at risk of addiction following exposure to drugs (as was highlighted in the Academy of Medical Sciences 2008 report ?Brain Science, addiction and drugs?). Addressing these questions requires an improved psychological and brain-based explanation of the processes by which casual or controlled drug use can progress to a compulsive drug seeking habit, such that drug addiction is manifested clinically as a chronic-relapsing disorder with devastating consequences for individuals, their families and the societies in which they live. In the proposed research, we aim to model and investigate in rats the neural basis of the transition from voluntary drug seeking through loss of control over this behaviour so that it becomes ultimately compulsive and persistent. We will continue our studies with cocaine, which along with other stimulant drugs such as methamphetamine presents a serious problem in the UK. But we will also introduce a new aspect to our research by studying compulsive alcohol seeking and drinking. Alcoholism and binge drinking are a major and growing problem, bringing with them extreme personal and societal costs ? alcohol misuse alone is estimated to cost the UK #25.1 billion every year (http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0708/reducing_alcohol_harm.aspx). Abstinence in addictive drug-dependent individuals is especially difficult to maintain and relapse, often triggered by drug-associated stimuli in the environment, is a characteristic of drug addiction. We now know that retrieval of positive memories of earlier drug taking by exposure to drug-associated stimuli and environments makes these memories vulnerable to disruption, since they undergo a process of ?reconsolidation? during which the memories are updated by re-engaging plastic brain processes. Therefore, we will continue to study the molecular and neurochemical basis of cocaine and alcohol memories and then investigate whether it is possible to diminish or block their pervasive impact on relapse to drug taking and addiction. A longer-term goal, therefore, is the development of novel medications for the treatment of drug addiction that will promote abstinence and prevent relapse in individuals trying to relinquish their compulsive drug seeking and taking habits.
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