- Scientists looked at brain scans of smokers who coincidentally quit after experiencing brain damage.
- They said they found interconnected brain regions that may underlie addiction.
- One expert said it could be the "most influential study" of the decade.
Brain scans of cigarette smokers who coincidentally quit after experiencing brain damage, such as strokes,
suggest interconnected brain regions underlie addiction, according to a study.
One in 14 Americans say they have a substance abuse disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Existing treatment can be inadequate, and can include some combination of medication, psychotherapy, and more invasive treatments such as delivering electrical impulses to the brain. The team behind the research hopes their findings could pave the way for targeted new treatments or the optimization of existing ones.
Dr. Juho Joutsa, a neurologist at the University of Turku, Finland, and co-author of the study published in Nature told The New York Times of the findings: "One of the biggest problems in addiction is that we don't really know where in the brain the main problem lies that we should target with treatment.
"We are hoping that after this, we have a very good idea of those regions and networks."
The scientists examined 129 brain scans in total from two separate groups of nicotine smokers who suffered brain injuries including strokes and then coincidentally quit cigarettes.
To see if the findings held true for other substance-use disorders, the team examined scans of a further 186 people with alcoholism who had brain injuries and quit drinking and saw the same patterns. This could mean interconnected brain regions underlie other substances-use disorders, although further research is needed to confirm this.
Thomas McLellan, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study, told The New York Times that he believes the study "could be one of the most influential publications not only of the year, but of the decade."
McLellan, a former deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said: "It puts to rest so many of the stereotypes that still pervade the field of addiction: that addiction is bad parenting, addiction is weak personality, addiction is a lack of morality."
New treatments could target specific areas of the brain
Treatments that deliver electrical impulses to the brain — such as deep brain stimulation or transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) — can target brain circuits in a way that's not possible with tablets, according to the researchers, some of whom own patents on using brain connectivity to guide brain stimulation. For example, it's possible to mimick brain damage by squashing electrical activity in a certain region.
The Food and Drug Administration has already approved a TMS device for addiction that target two regions in the brain previously linked with addiction.
Any new or optimized treatments resulting from the study are probably years away, as further studies are needed to clarify whether the findings hold true for other substance use disorders, how long the effects of any targeted treatments last for, and if there are any side effects, the study authors said.
Michael D. Fox, the founding director of the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women's Hospital and study co-author, said in a statement that the team was eager to rigourously test the "newly found targets for addiction remission" through clinical trials.
"Ultimately, our goal is to take larger steps towards improving existing therapies for addiction and open the door for remission," Fox, also an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, said.
