New Cocaine-Like Drug Boosts ‘Motivation,’ Neuroscientist Reveals

If you’ve ever felt apathetic about life in general or unmotivated to get up and do your job, a neuroscientist at the University of Connecticut wans you to know—there’s a drug for that. At least there likely soon will be, as U.Conn researcher John Salamone and his associate Renee Rotolo announced last week at the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego, California. “Basically we stood there for four hours and were busy the entire time,” Salamone told the site Inverse, adding that his presentation unveiling the new motivational drug received an overwhelmingly positive response. “We didn’t have anyone say ‘This is crazy! This will never work!’” Developed in conjunction with Chronos Therapuetics, a biotech company that specializes developing therapies for treating brain disorders, the new drug works by stopping production of a protein used by the brain to flush out excess dopamine—the brain chemical most often associated with the pleasure response, according to Science Daily.  As a result, dopamine—which is lacking in apathetic and unmotivated individuals—builds up in the brain, restoring motivation—that is, the drive necessary to get things done. At least, that’s what happened when Salamone and Rotolo gave the new drug to experimental rats who had been artificially deprived of dopamine. The dopamine-deprived rats simply could not be bothered to put in the effort required to find and consume food morsels. But when administered the new drug, they once again became willing and driven to work for their delectable rewards. The drug works in similar fashion to cocaine, which produces an intense rush of pleasure and even motivation by blasting the brain with dopamine. But in contrast to the illegal drug, rather than producing an explosion of dopamine, Salamone and Rotolo’s new drug produces “a long, slow, mild increase in dopamine,” Salmone said. As a result, the still-experimental pharmacuetical will not produce the “crash” that comes when a dose of cocaine wears off and dopamine levels in the brain suddenly go from one extreme to the other. The new drug will also come with less risk of users developing dependencies, the neuroscientists say. “Cocaine rapidly acts on that transporter, so people get a rush when they use cocaine. The dopamine shoots up and then it shoots down,” Salamone told Inverse. “So you get this very rapid neurochemical change, and it turns out that rapid neurochemical change is something that people who abuse drugs go for. But the drugs we’re looking at, the effect is slower and smaller. You get this slow, ramping increase that lasts for hours.” The new, motivational drug remains in the lab-rat testing phase, and it could be some time before it becomes available for humans, with no human clinical trials even in the planning stages as of yet. Photo By Koshele4ek / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain