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In a study investigating the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for drug addiction, researchers at Medical University of South Carolina are the first to demonstrate that the noninvasive brain stimulation technique can dampen brain activity in response to drug cues in chronic alcohol users and chronic cocaine users. The findings are published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
Although the last 50 years of clinical and preclinical research have demonstrated that addiction is a brain disease, there are still no neural circuit-based treatments for substance dependence or the brain functions involved in the disorder. “Here, for the first time, we demonstrate that a new non-invasive brain stimulation technique may be the first tool available to fill this critical void in addiction treatment development,” said senior author Colleen Hanlon, Ph.D.
Elevated brain activity in response to drug cues—referred to as cue reactivity—occurs with many types of…
