Putting the brake on risky behaviors: Researchers discovered a neural circuit that can stop risky behaviors

A team of researchers in the College of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) has discovered a brain circuit that inhibits motivated behaviors. They report in Nature Communications that the circuit is located in a region of the brain called the thalamus. When active, it can prevent reward-seeking behavior in a preclinical model. In the same model, blocking, or inhibiting, the circuit leads to reward seeking even in high-risk contexts. Importantly, administering opioids causes immediate and significant disruption of the circuit, resulting in even riskier behaviors. The findings from this study address an understudied area of addiction research and emphasize a new perspective for studying and treating addiction.

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