Study Shows Social Drinking Boosts Happiness in Fruit Flies

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — A research team from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has conducted a study using fruit flies to investigate the neurobiological mechanisms behind social drinking and its euphoric effects. The findings suggest that the brain regions activated by social drinking in fruit flies may parallel those in humans, shedding light on why social drinking can enhance feelings of happiness and sociability, while drinking alone may lead to depression. Dr. Kyung-An Han, a biologist at UTEP, emphasized the lack of mechanistic studies on how social contexts influence alcohol reactions. The research aims to deepen the understanding of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), which affected approximately 29.5 million individuals in 2023, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The study highlights the genetic similarities between fruit flies and humans, with about 75% of genes linked to human diseases shared between the two. The researchers discovered that ethanol, the active component in alcoholic beverages, elicits different responses in solitary versus social environments. While fruit flies showed a slight increase in activity when alone, those in social settings with elevated dopamine levels exhibited significantly heightened hyperactivity. This suggests that both social context and dopamine interact to amplify the effects of alcohol. Dr. Paul Rafael Sabandal, a corresponding author of the study, noted that their findings provide insights into how the brain processes social environments and integrates these signals with the dopamine system activated by alcohol. This research could pave the way for identifying potential targets for addressing AUD.