Could Exercise Help Meth Addicts Recover? Neuroscience News October 14, 2016

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http://neurosciencenews.com/exercise-meth-addiction-5297/


In the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo, researchers came to their hypothesis based on the similar reward centers found in both methamphetamine and the running wheel activity. It was Oliver Rawashdeh’s goal to combine a drug that could treat meth addiction with a non-harmful way, being exercise, to also counteract meth addiction. Addictions can negatively affect the circadian rhythms, which strongly correlates with the increase for the desire of the certain drug. Dr. Rawashdeh states that successful rehabilitation could be linked to the disturbance in the circadian rhythm. In this research, scientists studied mice, in which the suprachiasmatic nucleus was removed. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is known to be located within the hypothalamus that regulates the overall circadian clock. By removing the suprachiasmatic nucleus, researchers were then able to deactivate the methamphetamine-sensitive circadian oscillator that induces cravings of meth and re-create a circadian clock that would promote regularity. This was done by pairing exercise along with methamphetamine in 24 hour intervals, in which researchers overtime observed “a new clock” because of the new homeostatic state they created. By using the methamphetamine that caused the addiction along with exercise, which releases endorphins and promotes growth of new neurons, a new circadian rhythm was formed. Researchers intend to further study how exercise and methamphetamine pair to create a new circadian clock in the brain.

I found this research to be novel because addiction and withdrawal is very prevalent in our society today and the rates at which people recover from addiction and withdrawal are not highly significant due to the high reward system when taking a drug. It appears as though the researchers were able to use methamphetamine as an agonist with exercise, creating the same effects of taking meth without actually taking the drug itself. I found it interesting that the circadian rhythm had a prominent part in the addiction, seeing as in class we only discussed the mesolimbocortical dopamine system and structures such as the ventral tegmental area associated with addiction.

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