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���������� Note: New sciences provide insight into how the brain forms and manages behavioral patterns, but could they also provide treatment options that are more effective than medicines currently prescribed for behavioral and neurological disorders? As these technologies emerge, it could mean a new generation of patient protection knowledge required of advocates and communities.

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Technology Today; Sandra Henderson, 1/15/14��

Exploring how dopamine neurones in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain influences alcohol drinking behaviours, a study at the����(UB), ���������� (US), has found that the emerging technique of optogenetics can stop binge drinking in rodents, suggesting gene therapy in the brain could be used to treat substance abuse, drug addiction, neurological diseases and mental illnesses.

“We know that dopamine neurotransmission is linked to [alcohol drinking] behaviours, but we did not know how,” says��, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the UB��. “Optogenetics allows us to stimulate the dopamine neurones directly, to see if dopamine release can actually modify drinking.” Optogenetics introduces a light-sensitive protein (opsin) into the neurone. When exposed to light the protein causes the neurone to fire and release neurotransmitter. “In this paper, one innovation is that we were able to target this light sensitive protein to only dopamine neurones,” Bass says. She is referring to the article “,” published in��Frontiers in Neuroscience, for which she served as first author.��

Bass has no doubt optogenetics has already “revolutionised” neuroscience. “We can now do more than just measure neurotransmitter release or neuronal activity when a behaviour is happening,” she says. “We can induce release and see if it actually causes a behaviour.”

According to the pharmacology and toxicology expert, it is difficult to know which area of the brain is responsible for which behaviour. “Optogenetics allows us to parse this out,” says Bass. “We can stimulate a brain region to see how this alters behaviour and begin to map behaviours in a very precise way to the brain.” This ability to stimulate neurones with light could lead to better understanding of how to target these brain regions for developing treatments.

Bass’ pioneering work could help propel optogenetics to the next level. “One of the important aspect of this study is showing how opsins can be targeted to specific neurones in normal animals,” she says, explaining that most previous optogenetics studies have used mutant mice that come pre-engineered with opsin-induced neurones. The UB team, however, used rats and were able to target the opsin only to dopamine neurones. “This is important because it opens up the field to other experimental models, and it gives us an avenue for targeting opsins to humans,” Bass interprets. “In the future we may be able to treat many dopamine-based disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and addiction using this technique.”��

In the study, the test animals, rats, were trained to drink alcohol in a way that mimics human binge-drinking behaviour. “I was most surprised that low-level dopamine release prevented the animals from drinking long after we stopped stimulating the neurones,” Bass says. “This points to a lot of potential behavioural mechanisms involved in how dopamine influences drinking.”

Bass and her team still have many questions, such as which regions of the brain are most relevant to drinking alcohol? Would they see similar results with other drugs of abuse, such as cocaine? The team also want to extent their technique to targeting other types of neurones. “The brain is like a gigantic puzzle and it’s tools like these that will help us put the pieces together,” Bass says. “We are on the cusp of truly transformative studies in neuroscience.”

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