• RESEARCH BRIEFINGS

Ion channels have been created that are selectively activated by cocaine and that act to either stimulate or inhibit the electrical activity of neuronal cells in the brain. These cocaine-activated ion channels are used to engineer neural circuits in rats to respond to cocaine in a manner that reduces cocaine seeking but not food seeking.

This is a summary of: Gomez, J. L. et al. Cocaine chemogenetics blunts drug-seeking by synthetic physiology. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09427-8 (2025).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02609-4

‘Expert opinion’ and the figure are published under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

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