This is Your Brain on Addiction
December 6th, 2007 Posted by: Dr. Cox
By Leslie Miller, Ivanhoe Men’s health Correspondent
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — What does addiction do to the inside of a personâs brain? New research is providing important new clues that could one day lead to new medications to treat people who are addicted to drugs like cocaine and heroin, alcohol and even cigarettes.
Rochelle Schwartz-Bloom, Ph.D., a professor of pharmacology at Duke University Medical Center, has done extensive research in this area. She says studies of rats, monkeys and human patients offer new insight into how drugs change the chemistry and structure of the brain, and interfere with its normal function.
Researchers have found that in addicts, alcohol and drugs interfere with two key pathways in the brain — the pleasure/reward path and the path that causes craving and compulsive activity. Repeated use of nicotine and other drugs change complex behaviors by causing adaptations to occur in the brain. These adaptations occur particularly in the prefrontal cortex — the brain region responsible for focused attention — creating priorities, impulse control, motivation, judgment and other key behaviors.
PET scans of the brains of addicts and non-addicts showed that illegal drugs, alcohol and nicotine suppress the dopamine receptors in the brain that produce pleasure or satisfaction, and increase the receptors that cause craving, and a demand for more and more of the drug. Schwartz-Bloom cited a study that showed that, compared to non-smokers, smokers had increased nicotinic receptors in the frontal cortex of their brains — more receptors need more stimulation, in other words, more nicotine.
Studies now show in addiction, genetic and environmental factors also come into play, contributing to changes that cause the normal function of the brain to go âhaywire.â
âAddiction is a brain disorder, or brain disease,â Dr. Schwartz-Bloom said Tuesday at The Addiction Studies Program in Amelia Island, Fla. From her perspective, it is just like any other chronic relapsing disease, such as congestive heart failure; once changes take place disrupting normal function, additional physiological changes occur as the body tries to adapt.
Dr. Schwartz-Bloom discussed recent addiction research at this weekâs Addiction Studies Program, sponsored by Wake Forest University School of Medicine, National Families in Action and the Treatment Research Institute.
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SOURCE: The Addiction Studies Program sponsored by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, National Families in Action and the Treatment Research Institute, December 4-5, 2007