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Drinking through the pain

Nature Neuroscience volume 16, pages 987–988 (2013)Cite this article

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A feature of abusive alcohol drinking has been modeled successfully in experiments with rats. The experiments show that changes in NMDA signaling in specific neural circuits accompany the transition to aversion-resistant drinking.

Most of us drink alcoholic beverages. Unfortunately, some of us overindulge to the point of reaching diagnostic criteria for alcohol dependence. Rodent models have long been used to explore the neurobiology and motivation underlying different aspects of drinking, including binge drinking1, excessive drinking and relapse drinking during periods of abstinence2. One crucial, unanswered question is why people continue to drink excessively in the face of mounting evidence of damage to their health, relationships, work or happiness. Understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of the transition to persistent drinking even after the adverse consequences become evident would offer new potential treatment strategies.

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Figure 1: Neural circuitry underlying aversion-insensitive alcohol consumption.

Katie Vicari

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacology, Thomas L. Kash is in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA,

    Thomas L Kash

  2. Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Department of Behavioral Neuroscience, John C. Crabbe is at the Portland Alcohol Research Center, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Oregon, USA.,

    John C Crabbe

Authors
  1. Thomas L Kash
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  2. John C Crabbe
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Correspondence to Thomas L Kash or John C Crabbe.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Kash, T., Crabbe, J. Drinking through the pain. Nat Neurosci 16, 987–988 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3476

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