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María Carmen Blanco has received the 2017-2018 outstanding PhD thesis award in the area of Psychology for her thesis “Influence of a high-fat diet during adolescence on the reinforcing effects of cocaine and alcohol”, directed by Marta Rodríguez Arias, Professor of the Department of Psychobiology of the University of Valencia.
Blanco graduated in Psychology in 2011 from the University of Valencia, where she also studied the Official Master’s Degree in Research, Treatment and Associated Pathologies in Drug Addiction (DITPA). Subsequently, she completed her doctoral thesis in Research in Psychology in the Unit of Psychobiological Research of Drug Dependencies, in the research group of José Miñarro López and under the supervision of Marta Rodríguez Arias, both professors of the University of Valencia.
Since 2014, she has taught the Psychology and Speech Therapy degrees, and has participated in seminars of the Official Master of Physiology and the DITPA Master of the University of Valencia; she has co-directed DITPA Master’s Degree Thesis and, currently, co-directs a doctoral thesis on palatable food and social stress. In May 2018 she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Val I + D program of the Valencian Government. Nowadays, she is part of the research unit directed by José Miñarro of the University of Valencia and is an assistant professor in Psychology at the University of Zaragoza.
Her scientific career has been mainly focused on the study of vulnerability factors in the consumption of substances of abuse, such as diet and social stress. The research of her thesis has focused on the study of the modulating role of diet in the development of addiction, escalation and relapse in the consumption of cocaine and alcohol.
What difficulties have you encountered while undertaking the thesis?
I have encountered many difficulties, almost every day. These could be derived from the implementation of a binge-eating model that did not exist before, which has meant having to carry out pilot studies with all that entails. Other difficulties have come from experimental designs, analysis or laboratory work. But we have always solved them as a team and I have never felt alone, which I considered fundamental in my research.
What roads does your thesis leave open for future work?
This thesis was a new line of study in the Research Unit. We had to implement the model of binge eating palatable and oral self-administration of ethanol, and as a result of this have emerged numerous projects that have granted us to continue with research, both regionally with grants from the PROMETEO program and the Generalitat Valenciana , as at the national level with the National Plan on Drugs of the Ministry of Health.
The results have shown that exposure to binge-eating foods rich in fat and sugar, known as “cafeteria diet”, increases vulnerability by reinforcing the effects of alcohol and cocaine. We have also shown that this palatable food causes great brain changes, since it alters the expression of genes in the prefrontal cortex, the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area, relevant structures in the addiction process. The genetic alteration of these areas makes the individual more vulnerable to develop addiction to drugs of abuse.
All this has led to current studies in which we are raising, on the one hand, the modelling role of food in the face of social stress and, on the other hand, the role of diet as a treatment for substance abuse.
What do you think your research contributes to the scientific community as a whole and to society?
From the beginning we considered adolescents as the target population of the study. We know that there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in developed countries, especially in the adolescent population, which is also the most vulnerable to drug use. We have aimed to elucidate the characteristics that concur in food addiction, ultra-processed products rich in sugars and fats and children and adolescents exposure to all this type of contextual stimuli. We have opened a very broad line of research of which very little is known. Much has been learned about the role of food addiction, but not so much about the interaction between the pleasant consumption of ultra-processed foods and the vulnerability to drugs of abuse.
What applicability can your work have?
We believe that we have been able to demonstrate how palatable and ultra-processed food is affecting the brain reward system, altering the experiences of other types of natural and non-natural reinforcements, producing changes in the expression of our genes. These results indicate that diet plays a fundamental role, both in the acquisition and in the treatment of addictions, which begins to be taken into account in the clinic. I have seen in conferences how some people dedicated to the clinic raised questions about the role of binge eating palatable food in the addicted population, since many patients in detoxification substitute the pleasure of the drug for food, thus deploying a new disorder, the one of the feeding.
Does getting a Doctorate facilitate employability?
From my point of view, getting a doctorate does not facilitate employability more than any other job. Getting a doctorate should be something that we like, something for which we are willing to do a lot. The doctorate is the result, but the path must passionate us. We should not doctorate to find a better job, because if that is the motivation, we will surrender at the slightest difficulty. Currently, all specialties are very competitive and everyone has to work very, very hard to get where they want. Being a doctor does not guarantee anything.
Would you recommend starting doctoral studies? What advice would you give to a person who wants to get a PhD?
I insist on what I mentioned before. Doing a doctorate project, well done, should be pure love and dedication and, above all, frustration tolerance.
Have you actively participated in outreach activities and scientific communication? How important do you think these activities are?
Yes, both in the field of the University of Valencia, as well as in national and international conferences as well as secondary education institutes in Valencia. I have also written some informative articles about our line of research. I believe that the activity of communicating science is fundamental. It is about that the results are not only in scientific journals, but they reach any person, of any age, to create a greater awareness about what happens in aspects of daily life as in this case the palatable food and drug addiction. In addition, I especially like to reach young people, so that they see that youth also do science, and that they can continue with these lines of research and open up new horizons.
