A 2026 mouse study found forced abstinence increased drinking despite an unpleasant taste in some mice, compared with animals that did not undergo abstinence. Those mice also showed greater activity in the dBNST before alcohol access resumed.
The mice first learned to voluntarily self-administer alcohol through operant training. Researchers added quinine to make the drink unpleasant, then measured dBNST activity using calcium dynamics and c-Fos. The brain region has been studied in connection with stress and addiction-related processes.
The 2026 paper by Doyle et al., published in Molecular Psychiatry, is an animal-model study. It does not show that abstinence causes relapse in people, establish that the same brain pattern occurs in humans, or provide a clinical marker for predicting relapse. The findings also do not show that recovery approaches should change.
