The latest research into how substances such as alcohol, drugs and other things cause addiction in certain people has revealed a lot more to scientists about how the process actually works. So, we are now aware that an addiction such as drugs addiction will grab hold of one area of the brain that was, in evolutionary terms, responsible for how we survived in the pre-modern wild world. People’s brains are meant to function according to relevance. Consequently they are designed to allocate a lot more energy and time and attention to things that are acutely relevant or salient, such as immediate threats, or things that are essential for evolution such as eating and procreation. However, an addiction will result in these areas of the brain being co-opted by the addiction and the original systems being hot-wired to function according to the addiction.
Consequently, once people fall into the grips of a serious addiction (and that could be anything from sex addiction or gambling addiction through to the more common alcohol and drugs addictions) their ability to make decisions, their self-conditioning, memory systems and rewards circuits are all changed intrinsically so that when the area of the brain which relates to their addiction is accessed, their sense of craving is more than in that of other people.
Scientists have been looking at how this happens and have been concentrating on neurotransmitters such as dopamine. These bind the compound and populate nerve cells. Some dopamine receptors multiply when met with certain chemicals however. D3 dopamine receptors for example will multiply when in the presence of nicotine or cocaine. However, recent studies have shown that it is possible to dampen this down, by forcing the body and the reactions in the brain to significantly slow themselves down and consequently muting the addiction. Most people will do this anyway – the brain’s own inhibitor system kicks in and stops things from going too fast. With people who are addicted such an inhibitor system, (referred to as the GABA or gamma-aminobutyric acid) does not work as well and without it, people will quickly become addicted.


February 29th, 2012
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