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1 year ago
dopamine receptors, D2 and addiction…
“When the animal overstimulates its brain pleasure centers with highly palatable food
- the systems adapt by decreasing their activity
- However, now the animal requires constant stimulation from palatable food to avoid entering a persistent state of negative reward”.
They focused on a particular receptor in the brain known to play an important role in vulnerability to drug addiction and obesity ? the dopamine D2 receptor.
- The D2 receptor responds to dopamine, a neurotransmitter
- that is released in the brain by pleasurable experiences like food or sex or drugs like cocaine.
- In cocaine abuse, for example, the drug alter the flow of dopamine by blocking its retrieval,
- flooding the brain and overstimulating the receptors
- something that eventually leads to physical changes in the way the brain responds to the drug.
The new study shows that the same thing happens in junk food addiction.
“These findings confirm what we and many others have suspected:
- overconsumption of highly pleasurable food triggers addiction-like neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuitries
- driving the development of compulsive eating.
- Common mechanisms may therefore underlie obesity and drug addiction.”
Consistent with common mechanisms explaining addiction and obesity:
- levels of the D2 dopamine receptors were significantly reduced in the brains of the obese animals
- similar to previous reports of what happens in human drug addicts
- Remarkably, when the scientists knocked down the receptor using a specialized virus, the development of addiction-like eating was dramatically accelerated.
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