An animal study shows the notion that drug cravings can be turned off by shutting down parts of the brain. This finding could mean that drugs trained to operate on the insular cortex of the brain, precisely, could stop the brain from feeling the pain associated with cravings and body disturbances due to withdrawl.
But what does the insular cortex do otherwise that is needed for human life? Well basically it handles human emotion, things like ability to feel sympathetic to others, sadness, happiness, etc. Suppose this will go back to lobotomies done in the 1950′s that turned people into Zombies, if refined this new discovery could lead to either medication or electrode implants which could attempt to stop these emotions from coming into the addiction play. In addition to helping addicts, it could help in weigh loss, where this particular region of the brain handles cravings.
This new information is important because we could have guessed that shutting down a brain would stop cravings, but the object is to shut down only particular areas of the brain.
