health 45

However, glia, the non-neuronal supporting cells of the brain, have now been implicated in the consolidation of cocaine-related memories. Researchers, led by senior author Dr. Jie Shi, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at Peking University in China, report these new findings in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry. Glia play a number of roles that support nerve cells. For example, they take up energy substrates, like glucose and acetate, and metabolize these chemicals into lactate, which they then release. Nerve cells absorb this lactate and use it to fuel many cellular functions. In their new paper, Shi and colleagues report that reactivation of cocaine memories in rats alters the expression of a protein that releases lactate from glia and enables nerve cells to take up lactate. The authors found that if they blocked lactate release by glia or uptake by nerve cells, they produced a long-lasting prevention of cocaine relapse in rodents. These data indicate that cellular...

According to 2016 statistics from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), almost 7 percent of adults over the age of 18 had a drinking disorder in 2014. Alcohol-related deaths were deemed the fourth leading cause of preventable death, accounting for nearly 88,000 deaths in the same year. Images of the brain lit up like fireworks as people experience pleasure and reward are a familiar sight, but sometimes the reward needs to be taken away. In this groundbreaking study, researchers imaged the brains of recently recovering alcoholics and found an inverse and compensatory adaptation in a particular receptor involved in memory, learning, and the sensations of pain and anxiety. This receptor, called metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 5 (mGluR5), is found throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems but, in certain areas of the brain, it is implicated in intense cravings and addictive relapse. It seems that the brains of recovering alcoholics have ada...