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Brain Changes In Addiction | Addiction Treatment Strategies

Lasting Brain Changes Discovered In Underage Binge…

Lasting Brain Changes Discovered In Underage Binge Drinkers

Number Processing in Children With ADHD and Alcoho…

In children, the brain is in a constant state of flux as it analyzes and evaluates stimuli from the environment. Fetal alcohol exposure and ADHD represent two disorders that can affect children’s ability to learn and process information from a very young age.
 Both ADHD and fetal alcohol exposure are linked to poor academic performance in cognition and attention, so the researchers decided to try to pinpoint the exact brain areas affected by each disorder with the hope that this research could lead to the creation and development of new and improved treatments.
The results will be published in the March 2011 issue of Alcoholism:…

Booze a Bad Mix With Poor Impulse Control

In a long-running, prospective cohort study among people seeking help for alcohol-related problems, those with poor impulse control had an increased risk of dying, according to Daniel Blonigen, PhD, and colleagues at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif.
The effect was independent of the risk associated with alcohol use disorders, Blonigen and colleagues reported online in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Both impulsivity and alcohol use disorders are known to increase the risk of premature death, the researchers noted, and alcohol use increases impulsive behavior. But there has been no research on…

The Four Loko Effect

The popular, formerly caffeinated, fruity alcoholic beverage, Four Loko, has been blamed for the spike in alcohol-related hospitalizations, especially throughout college campuses.Initially, caffeine was deemed the culprit and the Food and Drug Administration ordered all traces of caffeine to be removed from Four Loko and all other similar beverages. However, according to an upcoming evaluation in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, caffeine might not be the primary cause of the spike in hospitalizations.
“Four Loko didn’t have the extraordinary intoxicating effect…

New Piece to the Puz…

Researchers at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen have collaborated with the company NeuroSearch to generate new knowledge about an important part of the brain’s complex communication system. The discovery could form the basis for future development of…

Alcohol Harms The Brain Immediately

A nice drink cannot do any harm? Brain says no. A new study by a Chinese research group shows that even low doses of alcohol can harm the brain immediately though not permanently. “We were investigating the acute effects of low and high doses of alcohol by diffusion tensor imaging, wondering whether the consequences of alcohol administration can be observed by the measurement of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and fractional anisotropy (FA)”, said Dr. Lingmei Kong (Shantou University Medical College, China) at the 21st Annual Meeting of the European Neurological Society (ENS) in Lisbon. They could. The participants of the…

A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved

Putting feelings into words produces therapeutic effects in the brain
Why does putting our feelings into words — talking with a therapist or friend, writing in a journal — help us to feel better” A new brain imaging study by UCLA psychologists reveals why verbalizing our feelings makes our sadness, anger and pain less intense.
Another study, with the same participants and three of the same members of the research team, combines modern neuroscience with ancient Buddhist teachings to provide the first neural evidence for why “mindfulness” — the ability to live in the present moment, without distraction — seems to produce a…

Scientists Explore New Link Between Genetics, Alco…

Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System have uncovered a new link between genetic variations associated with alcoholism, impulsive behavior and a region of the brain involved in craving and anxiety.
 
The results, published online April 12 in Molecular Psychiatry, suggest that variations in the GABRA2 gene contribute to the risk of alcoholism by influencing impulsive behaviors, at least in part through a portion of the cerebral cortex known as the insula, says study senior author Margit Burmeister, Ph.D., research professor at U-M’s Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute.
 
“Scientists often…

Drunk Behavior: A Question of Immunity

University of Adelaide researchers have found that immune cells in your brain may contribute to how you respond to alcohol.
Lead researcher Dr Mark Hutchinson, ARC Research Fellow with the University’s School of Medical Sciences, said his team’s research provided new evidence that an immune response in the brain was involved in behavioural responses to alcohol.
This immune response lies behind some of the well-known alcohol-related behavioural changes, such as difficulty controlling the muscles involved in walking and talking.
“It’s amazing to think that despite 10,000 years of using alcohol, and several decades of…

How Alcohol Changes The Brain

How Alcohol Changes The Brain