BEES BUZZED IN DRUG STUDY

Cocaine Made Insects 'Waggledance,' And Scientists Hope Research Sheds
Light On Addiction

SYDNEY -- An Australian scientist is doping honey bees with cocaine to study
how their brain reacts to the drug, and possibly find a way to stop
addiction in humans.

The research found similarities between honey bees and humans, in that
they are both driven by rewards and both have their judgement altered
by cocaine.

"This is the first time that it's been shown that cocaine has been
rewarding to an insect," said Andrew Barron, co-author of the report
published this month in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

As part of a joint project between Australia's Macquarie University,
the Australian National University and University of Illinois, Barren
applied tiny doses of cocaine to the backs of bees before sending them
out to hunt for food.

Normally when bees return from collecting pollen they perform a dance
to communicate where the food was found and how good it tasted. The
cocaine-induced honey bees "waggledanced" much more enthusiastically
than other bees, and seemed to experience the same addictive pleasures
as humans, the report added.

Barron said the cocaine changed the bees' estimation of how successful
its trip had been.

"What we found was that the honey bee responds to cocaine in very
similar ways as humans, so cocaine changes the way the bees evaluate,"
he said. "We also found that when we let the bees go 'cold turkey,'
they had real difficulties learning, which is the same thing you see
in humans when they go through withdrawal."

Barron said he hoped to identify the neural pathways that cocaine
targets in bees to find out more about the mechanisms involved in
human addiction and to find out whether the drug has as devastating an
effect on bee society as it does on humans.

"If we could do that, we could possibly develop new treatments to
prevent or treat addiction," he said, adding that the bees used in the
experiment were not harmed.