According to a latest study, your brain's immunity could have a possible link in motivating you to pick up a glass of alcohol at night. If you have the habit of downing a drink every evening before you hit the bed, it may be due to the impulsiveness of the brain's immune system, suggests the study.
The findings revealed that the habit may stem out of our body's circadian rhythm which affects the "reward" signals that one receives in the brain from drug-related behaviour and the peak time for this reward signal typically occurs during the evening or around night time.
Lead author Jon Jacobsen, PhD student at the University of Adelaide, Australia, "Alcohol is the world's most commonly consumed drug and there is a greater need than ever to understand the biological mechanisms that drive our need to drink alcohol," "We wanted to test what the role of the brain's immune system might have on that reward and whether or not we could switch it off," Jacobsen added.
For the study, the team switched off the impulse to drink alcohol by giving mice a drug that blocks a specific response from the immune system in the brain, to examine their brain’s behavioral changes and immunity.
The study, published in the journal Brain administered the drug (+)-Naltrexone, which supposedly blocked the immune receptor Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) in mice. The team noted, that the results showed a substantial reduction in alcohol drinking behaviour by mice, which were given (+)-Naltrexone, at night when there is greatest tendency of the reward signal in the drug related behavior.
"We concluded that blocking a specific part of the brain's immune system did in fact substantially decrease the motivation of mice to drink alcohol in the evening," Jacobsen said. Researchers believe that the study would become a significant intervention in understanding the drinking behaviour in humans, and paving way for further research to understand the implications.
(Inputs IANS)