Years ago, in a famous public service television ad, a hand cracked an egg and dropped it in a heated skillet. A male voice said, “This is your brain” (see the intact egg) and then “This is your brain on drugs” (see the egg frying, hear the skillet sizzle.) It must have been an effective ad because those of us who have reached a certain age all remember it years later, right?
They don’t show that ad anymore but federally-funded research by the University of Pennsylvania published this week made me think of it.
Researchers gave brain scans to 22 cocaine addicts while showing them quick subliminal cues such crack pipes and chunks of cocaine. The 33-millisecond images were too short to register consciously.
But even though the addicts weren’t aware of seeing them, the images lit up their limbic system, a region associated with emotion and reward.
Anna Rose Childress also found the brain regions activated by drug images overlapped with those activated by sexual images. The results were published Wednesday in PLOS One.
Some experts argue that scientists read too much into brain scan results these days, but the work has fascinating implications for researchers trying to find out why some people are more prone to addiction and have a harder time kicking drug habits than others. Obviously people are free to make choices, but I think the work tries to address a bit of what goes on in the brain to influence those choices.
The findings bolster arguments that drug addicts' brains work differently and that addiciton stimulates physiological changes in the brain. The result is that drugs activate regions most people use to recognize stimuli inherent for survival, such food and sex. The brain is programmed to recognize basic rewards that promote survival, and in addicts, cocaine and other drugs latch on to that system. Or so the researchers say.
More about the work in the article.
01-02-2008, 19:36
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