Hunger and alcohol reward

Congrats to Kavin Nunez and Lewis Sherer, who are co-first authors on 'Hunger Recruits a Parallel Circuit Encoding Alcohol Reward' which was just published in Current Biology. Kavin, Lewis and their fellow co-authors from the Kaun Lab Anthony Walley, Sarah Salamon, and Vivian Chan revealed that a single neuron called VUMa3 gets activated during hunger, and taps into a circuit whos activity is required for remembering the rewarding properties of alcohol. This speeds up how soon alcohol is remembered as rewarding.

Kavin and Lewis identified the cell as octopaminergic, and that it regulates itself through the Octopamine-Tyrosine receptor. They were able to visualize this receptor with a new tool developed by collaborator Steve Stowers at Montana State University.

Then they mapped postsynaptic connections via transTango (a collaboration with Mustafa Talay and Gilad Barnea at Brown) and the FlyWire connectome to show it acts on mushroom body output neurons important for remembering the rewarding aspects of alcohol. This simple circuit framework can help us understand how hunger might trigger cravings for alcohol through noradrenergic signaling.

Check out a great article written by Alice Popovici in Brown News highlighting these exciting findings 'Hunger may play a role in alcohol addiction, new study finds'.