South Dakota Research is Featured in Washington D.C.
Project seeks to shed new light on the treatment of addiction
SIOUX FALLS (Aug. 5, 2009) - Research under way in South Dakota which is aimed at gaining a greater understanding of addiction is being featured in Washington, D.C., in presentations to Congress.
Dr. Patrick Ronan is a research scientist with the basic research division of the Avera Research Institute. He is director of a project that centers on the brain's response to stress and addiction, and his research was among five examples of behavioral and social sciences research chosen by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Research Resources for making presentations to congressional committees. This project is part of the University of South Dakota's Center for Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) on Neural Mechanisms of Adaptive Behavior headed by Dr. Joyce Keifer and is also supported by the Sioux Falls Veterans Administration Medical Center and the South Dakota Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN).
At the Avera Research Institute, Dr. Ronan uses molecular biology techniques coupled with animal behavior models to study the relationship between stress and brain disorders with a particular interest in the role of a stress-related hormone/neurotransmitter called corticotropin releasing factor (CRF).
"I've always been interested in the role stress plays in psychiatric disorders - everything from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to addiction," Dr. Ronan said. This particular project, funded through the National Institutes of Health, investigates the role of stress in addiction. "We're specifically looking at cocaine addiction, but it could be any addiction, from methamphetamines or alcohol to binge overeating," Dr. Ronan said.
The research looks at the stress neurotransmitter CRF and how it can stimulate the brain's reward system, giving the user the very strong desire to use the drug again when under stress. The brain's reward system was designed to enhance survival by reinforcing adaptive behaviors such as sex and eating good food. But additionally, this reward system evolved to reinforce heightened arousal because this was necessary for survival. "Drugs of abuse hijack this reward pathway and trick our brains into thinking on an unconscious level that taking the drug is actually adaptive. So even though they're losing their health, family and jobs, addicts continue to take drugs because on a very primitive level their brain thinks it is performing a behavior that will help them survive. We have found that cocaine use and withdrawal strengthens the connections between stress/arousal pathways and these reward pathways potentially making addicts more sensitive to the effects of stress. This might contribute to a priming sort of effect where stress causes the reward pathway to fire and reminds the addict, again unconsciously, that they should repeat that other behavior that really made this pathway fire, namely taking drugs." Dr. Ronan said.
Ultimately, the team hopes to gain a better understanding of CRF's role in the behavior problems associated with addiction and stress-induced relapse to drug use. In the future, Dr. Ronan said this research could help lead to new pharmaceutical treatments for addiction.
Dr. Ronan's research team includes Leah Callahan, research associate with the Avera Research Institute, and USD School of Medicine PhD student Kristi Tschetter along with a number of undergraduate BRIN fellows.
For more information about this and other Avera Research Institute projects, go to www.Avera-Research.org.
