14 DAY TRIAL // Always devising new ways of helping addicts quit strong drugs such as heroin and cocaine is a challenge to even the most well-prepared professionals. In a new study, conducted by the Brookhaven National Laboratory, a part of the US Department of Energy (DOE), experts learned that brain areas related to monitoring behavior and emotions functioned fairly differently between drug users and average people, even if they performed equally well in psychological tests. The find could have positive implications in devising new ways of addressing addiction, and helping users quit.
“Many studies have found decreased brain activity in drug-addicted individuals relative to healthy control subjects during psychological tests. But it's never been clear if these differences were due to varying levels of interest or ability between the two groups. This is the first study to look at two groups matched for performance and interest — and we still see dramatic differences in the brain regions that play a very significant role in the ability to monitor behavior and regulate emotion, which are both important to resisting drug use,” Brookhaven Lab Psychologist Rita Goldstein says.
“Whether these brain differences are an underlying cause or a consequence of addiction, the brain regions involved should be considered targets for new kinds of treatments aimed at improving function and self-regulatory control,” she adds. Goldstein is also the lead author of a new study detailing the team's find, published online ahead of print in the May 25th online issue of the respected scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).
For the research, the experts enlisted the help of 17 drug users, as well as 17 healthy control subjects, selected from the same demographical areas. All participants were trained to push one of four colored buttons, each of them associated with a specific class of words. They were given money for each fast and accurate response, amounting to 50 cents each, for a maximum of $75.
“When you really have to suppress a powerful negative emotion, like sadness, anxiety or drug craving, activity in this brain region is supposed to decrease, possibly to tune out the background 'noise' of these emotions so you can focus on the task at hand. Our results show that activity in this region indeed went down in the drug-using group, suggesting they were actively trying to suppress craving. Indeed, subjects who reported the highest levels of task-induced craving were the least able to suppress activity in this particular brain region,” Goldstein explains.
“This could be because these drug users were still being distracted by background 'noise' stimuli, like memories of having taken drugs or anticipation of further use. This work gives us some clues as to what happens when drug users are unable to suppress craving – and how that might work together with a decreased ability to monitor behavior, even during neutral, non-emotional situations, to make some people more vulnerable to taking drugs,” she concludes.
The research yielded three basic conclusions: addicts had reduced activity in a portion of the anterior cingulate cortex (usually associated with monitoring behavior), as well as in another part of the same formation, which is usually associated with successfully suppressing emotions. Additionally, the behavior-monitoring and emotion-monitoring brain regions were not inter-connected in drug addicts, as opposed to the healthy control subjects.