Researchers have found the reason behind relapse of the drug abuse habit.

Drugs are addictive because they "hijack" the brain's reward system, which is actually intended to make it pleasurable to eat and have sex, behaviours that are necessary for survival and reproduction.
This "hijacking" is extremely long-lived and often leads to relapses into abuse, especially when the individual is exposed to stimuli in the surroundings that are associated with the drug.
And, researchers have now shown that a receptor for the signal substance glutamate (mGluR5), in a part of the brain called the striatum, plays a major role in relapses.
The study, led by David Engblom, associate professor of neurobiology at Linkoping University in Sweden, looks at what happens in individuals who lack the glutamate receptor.
The experiments were performed on mice that were taught to ingest cocaine.
Advertisement
He hopes that these findings and other studies of mechanisms underlying drug addiction can lead to forms of treatment based on what goes wrong in the brain of an addict.
Advertisement
Source-ANI