Penn researchers use MRI to study drug addiction

WILLIAM BENDER, Daily News Staff Writer benderw@phillynews.com, 215-854-5255 Posted: Friday, January 18, 2013, 3:01 AM

MATTHEW ELLIS started popping painkillers as a teenager and switched to heroin a few years later. It was simple economics, and a common progression among today's opiate addicts - the recreational drug dabbler turned full-time junkie.

That's usually when the nightmare takes hold. You start living life one injection at a time. Everything else - career, family, self-respect - is prioritized behind the next little wax-paper bag of dope.

"I was hopelessly addicted to heroin," said Ellis, 25, a carpenter's assistant and father of two young boys.

Ellis, who lives in Deptford, N.J., repeatedly tried to get clean. He attempted to taper off his habit with Suboxone. He also did about seven rounds of treatment, both outpatient and inpatient. Some of his stints lasted months. But the drug seemed to stalk him from within.

"It would get in my head and stay in my head until I did it," Ellis said.

Today, after enrolling in a clinical study at the University of Pennsylvania, Ellis has three months of heroin-free time under his belt. Neuroscientists at the university's Center for Studies of Addiction are using MRI research to understand how opiates hijacked the reward system in Ellis' brain.

By watching how regions of the brain react to drug-related photos, or cues, researchers believe they can predict which addicts will succeed with certain treatments and which will relapse - a hypothesis that shatters the stubborn misconception that conquering addiction is solely a matter of "willpower."

"You can be a fortuneteller," said Anna Rose Childress, a psychologist who directs the center's cocaine-related MRI research. "But it's not just knowledge. It's not just pretty brain pictures. It's hope."

The goal is to use the research to develop more effective treatments and, perhaps eventually, personalized medicine tailored to each addict's mental strengths and vulnerabilities, which are shaped by genetics, life experiences and drug use.

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Penn researchers use MRI to study drug addiction