Chronic heavy alcohol drinking can lead to a problem that we scientists call alcohol use disorder, which most people call alcohol abuse or alcoholism. Whatever name you use, it is a severe issue that affects millions of people and their families and causes economic burdens to our society.
Quitting alcohol, like quitting any drug, is hard to do. One reason may be that heavy drinking can actually change the brain. Our research team at Texas A&M University Health Science Center has found that alcohol changes the way information is processed through specific types of neurons in the brain, encouraging the brain to crave more alcohol. Over time, the more you drink, the more striking the change.
In recent research we identified a way to mitigate these changes and reduce the desire to drink using a genetically engineered virus.
Alcohol changes your brain
Alcohol use disorders include alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence, and can be thought of as an addiction. Addiction is a chronic brain disease. It causes abnormalities in the connections between neurons.
[quote position="right" is_quote="true"]Alcohol changes the way information is processed through specific types of neurons, encouraging the brain to crave more of it.[/quote]
Heavy alcohol use can cause changes in a region of the brain, called the striatum. This part of the brain processes all sensory information (what we see and what we hear, for instance), and sends out orders to control motivational or motor behavior.
The striatum, which is located in the forebrain, is a major target for addictive drugs and alcohol. Drug and alcohol intake can profoundly increase the level of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and motivation, in the striatum.
The neurons in the striatum have higher densities of dopamine receptors as compared to neurons in other parts of the brain. As a result, striatal neurons are more susceptible to changes in dopamine levels.
There are two main types of neurons in the striatum: D1 and D2. While both receive sensory information from other parts of the brain, they have nearly opposite functions.
D1-neurons control “go” actions, which encourage behavior. D2-neurons, on the other hand, control “no-go” actions, which inhibit behavior. Think of D1-neurons like a green traffic light and D2-neurons like a red traffic light.
Dopamine affects these neurons in different ways. It promotes D1-neuron activity, turning the green light on, and suppresses D2-neuron function, turning the red light off. As a result, dopamine promotes “go” and inhibits “no-go” actions on reward behavior.
Alcohol, especially excessive amounts, can hijack this reward system because it increases dopamine levels in the striatum. As a result, your green traffic light is constantly switched on, and the red traffic light doesn’t light up to tell you to stop. This is why heavy alcohol use pushes you to drink to excess more and more.
These brain changes last a very long time. But can they be mitigated? That’s what we want to find out.
Can we mitigate these changes?
We started by presenting mice with two bottles, one containing water and the other containing 20 percent alcohol by volume, mixed with drinking water. The bottle containing alcohol was available every other day, and the mice could freely decide which to drink from. Gradually, most of animals developed a drinking habit.
We then used a process called viral mediated gene transfer to manipulate the “go” or “no-go” neurons in mice that had developed a drinking habit.
[quote position="left" is_quote="true"]Employing viruses to deliver specific genes into neurons is already in practice for disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.[/quote]
Mice were infected with a genetically engineered virus that delivers a gene into the “go” or “no-go” neurons. That gene then drives the neurons to express a specific protein.
After the protein is expressed, we injected the mice with a chemical that recognizes and binds to it. This binding can inhibit or promote activity in these neurons, letting us turn the green light off (by inhibiting “go” neurons) or turn the red light (by exciting “no-go” neurons) back on.
Then we measured how much alcohol the mice were consuming after being “infected,” and compared it with what they were drinking before.
We found that either inhibiting the “go” neurons or turning on the “no-go” neurons successfully reduced alcohol drinking levels and preference for alcohol in the “alcoholic” mice.
In another experiment in this study, we found that directly delivering a drug that excites the “no-go” neuron into the striatum can also reduce alcohol consumption. Conversely, in a previous experiment we found that directly delivering a drug that inhibits the “go” neuron has the same effect. Both results may help the development of clinical treatment for alcoholism.
What does this mean for treatment?
Most people with an alcohol use disorder can benefit from treatment, which can include a combination of medication, counseling and support groups. Although medications, such as Naltrexone, to help people stop drinking can be effective, none of them can accurately target the specific neurons or circuits that are responsible for alcohol consumption.
Employing viruses to deliver specific genes into neurons has been for disorders such as Parkinson’s disease in humans. But while we’ve demonstrated that this process can reduce the desire to drink in mice, we’re not yet at the point of using the same method in humans.
Our finding provides insight for clinical treatment in humans in the future, but using a virus to treat alcoholism in humans is probably still a long way off.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.