New research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley has uncovered the part of the brain network that is responsible for the negative reaction to nicotine, reports Medical Xpress.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are hopeful that this latest discovery might lead to new approaches and help people to quit smoking. The research that was carried out on mice suggests that the responsible part of the brain network could be manipulated to treat nicotine dependence, reports Medical Xpress.
“Decades of research have focused on understanding how nicotine reward leads to drug addiction and what are the underlying brain circuits. In contrast, the brain circuits that mediate the aversive effects of nicotine are largely understudied,” said Stephan Lammel, UC Berkeley associate professor of molecular and cell biology.
“What we found is that the brain circuits that are activated after a high aversive dose are actually different from those that are activated when nicotine is delivered at a low dose. Now that we have an understanding of the different brain circuits, we think we can maybe develop a drug so that, when nicotine is taken at a low dose, these brain circuits can be coactivated to induce an acute aversive effect. This could actually be a very effective treatment for nicotine addiction in the future, which we currently do not have,” he said.
During their research, Lammel and Christine Liu, who recently obtained her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, also found that nicotine receptors in the reward pathway become desensitized when confronted with high doses of nicotine, which could contribute to the negative experience of high doses, reports Medical Xpress.