Two Studies Offer Clues About How Alcoholic Behavior Is 'Switched' On; Papers Describe How Efforts to Block or Modify Reward Circuits Affect Drinking in Animals.

Byline: Brookhaven National Laboratory

UPTON, N.Y., May 9 (AScribe Newswire) -- As part of an ongoing effort to understand the biochemical basis of alcohol abuse, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have published two studies on how modulating receptors for dopamine - a chemical "signaler" in the brain's reward circuits - affects drinking behavior in mice and rats.

"Stopping alcohol abuse will never be as simple as turning on or off a 'switch,' but finding ways to modulate the brain's reward circuits could play a role in developing successful treatments," said Brookhaven's Panayotis (Peter) Thanos, lead author of both studies. The studies appear in the May 27, 2005, issue of Life Sciences and the June 2005 issue of Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, both now available online.

In the first study, the …