Futile Punishment

Credit: Nolan Zunk

Decades into the war on drugs, neuroscientists are learning that punishing drug use may actually work against the goal of keeping teens or people with addiction away from drugs. 

“Punishment seems logical on the surface,” said Micky Marinelli, an associate professor of neuroscience at UT Austin, “but that is coming from a healthy adult brain. When we look at adolescent brains and drug-addicted brains, we see something very different.”

Marinelli and her team can examine what happens inside the brains of live rats in real-time using special recording techniques. Rats who used drugs occasionally were given mild electrical shocks when they took drugs. The electrical shocks caused the rats to stop taking the drugs in the moment. The next day, adult rats who occasionally used drugs refused to take the drugs. The adolescent rats went right back to taking the drugs, and often more than before, as if nothing had happened. The adults could be deterred with punishment, but the adolescents could not. 

Neuroscientists are learning that punishing drug use may actually work against the goal of keeping teens or people with addiction away from drugs.

In a separate experiment, Marinelli and her team found that the shocks caused a pause in dopamine activity in the brains of the adult rats. In the adolescent rats, however, the dopamine activity never stopped. 

“In the case of adolescents, it’s like the punishment never happened from a neurobiological standpoint,” Marinelli said. “Speaking as a parent, it’s so innate to want to punish bad behavior, hoping it will be a deterrent, but it just doesn’t work that way for young brains.”

Punishment is ultimately a stressor, Marinelli said. The team also found that when drug-addicted brains experience stress, it can exacerbate addiction.