Memory may draw addicts back to cocaine
Nostalgia may be a recovering drug addict’s worst enemy. A memory center of the brain acts as an ignition switch for relapse into cocaine addiction, scientists suggest in the May 11 Science.
The researchers electrically stimulated the hippocampus in the brains of formerly drug-addicted rats. The treatment reignited powerful cravings for cocaine.
“It is the first time anyone has ever been able to stimulate relapse by [electrically] stimulating a brain circuit,” says coauthor Eliot L. Gardner of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Baltimore.