Drug cravings can persist long after an addict is “clean”, and often cause relapse. Now we are closer to understanding why, with a detailed picture of how the highly addictive drug methamphetamine causes long-lasting changes in key communication pathways between neurons in the brain. Researchers led by Nigel Bamford of the University of Washington in Seattle, US, gave mice large doses of methamphetamine, equivalent to those taken by addicts during drug binges, to see how this affected communication between cells in the brain’s cortex and those in a region of the brain called the striatum.
