What's happening at the lab now

August 07, 2011

Among the studies in progress at the Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory:

•Volunteers get alcohol intravenously and undergo MRIs to see what parts of their brains are activated. The study seeks to explain why some people become cheerful when they drink while others fall asleep, which could be a function of how alcohol affects the brain and may influence the development of alcoholism.

•To further understand how MDMA, or Ecstasy, affects people's responses to positive and negative images, researchers are measuring the facial contractions of volunteers who take the drug to see whether they react more positively to pictures of happy social interactions than to non-social but happy images, such as puppies.

•Harriet de Wit, director of the lab, and Abraham Palmer, assistant professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, are examining whether genetics can help determine responses to amphetamines. Though their results have not yet been published, they have found that people with certain genotypes respond with greater feelings of well-being and particularly like the drug. That could help explain the underlying biology of drug addiction, Palmer said, and help predict who might be at risk of abusing drugs.

— Barbara Brotman