Radioneuromodulation of Nucleus Accumbens for Addiction: The First Animal Study.

Objective: Addiction is a serious spiral where negative events or relationships triggers a craving even when the situation is caused by the addiction in the first place. Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) is identified as an important hub for the neural pathways involved in the addictive behavior. Stimulation of this structure was demonstrated to be beneficial for addiction previously, but radioneuromodulation was never investigated until today. This study aimed to investigate if radioneuromodulation of the nucleus accumbens has any effect on alcohol addiction.

Methods: An addiction model was employed on 36 Long-Evans Rats (18 females/18 males), via a two-bottle intermittent access protocol and the trial group received 100 Gy of gamma irradiation to their bilateral NAcc. Rats were followed up for an additional 15 weeks. Multiple sets of a behavioral test battery, a 4-week abstinence period and quinine adulteration challenges were employed to evaluate responses.

Results: The experiment showed that the intervention reduced alcohol preference in the presence of aversive stimuli in female rats, compared to the non-irradiated controls, as the trial group showed 9.83-point decrease in alcohol preference rate under high dose quinine adulteration compared to the baseline, whereas the control group did not show any decrease. Also there were implications of additional benefits regarding weight control in females and behavioral tests in males. No evident adverse effect was observed with the treatment.

Conclusions: This study indicates that nucleus accumbens radioneuromodulation, although not significantly affecting baseline consumption, reduces intake when an aversive stimulus is involved, implying improved self-control.