Scientists Can Now Shut Down the Part of Your Brain that Makes You Drink Like an Idiot

Getting drunk may seem like a simple behaviour—just knock back a few shots and let the fadesies take hold—and the outcome is certainly predictable.

But for your brain, on whom you are launching an all-out assault, things are way more complicated. Scientists have only recently begun pinpointing the parts of your brain that whisper, then yell, "ONE MORE DRINK!" and all signs point to one day being able to shut those parts down.

Building on this body of work, the authors of a recent study published in The Journal of Neuroscience say they were able to take a bunch of alcoholic rats and get them to completely stop drinking "compulsively" with an injection targeting and de-activating a specific brain pathway linking drinking and reward.

"We can completely reverse alcohol dependence by targeting a network of neurons," Professor Olivier George said in a press statement.

"It's like they forgot they were dependent," he said, adding that even he was surprised at how effective it was. "We've never seen an effect that strong that has lasted for several weeks. I wasn't sure if I believed it."

Unbelievable as these results may be, it would be presumptuous to extend them to human drinking at this point. Still, these are promising leads, especially since these neurons make up 5 percent of the central amygdala in both human and rat brains, according to researchers, meaning that it's not a huge stretch to think that these results could be the basis of further research in humans.

Plus, when it comes to the most complex object in the known universe—the human brain—any new information is valuable. "It is very challenging to target such a small population of neurons in the brain, but this study helps to increase our knowledge of a part of the brain that is still a mystery," lead author Giordano de Guglielmo concluded.

Will humans who are dependent on alcohol one day be shooting neuron-deactivating compounds into their arms before a night of partying? Or will they just get addicted to that, too? We shall see. In the meantime, pour one out for the brave wino rats whose lives are dedicated to helping us understand why we drink like arseholes.