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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Are drug users predisposed to addiction? A new study examines the source of cocaine addiction.
Researchers specifically looked at the thickness of certain brain regions to find differences between healthy and drug-addicted brains.
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Results showed cocaine addicts had thinner brain tissue in regions responsible for regulating attention and reward, and behavioral tests confirmed addicts had significant problems in these areas. While further investigation linked those differences to actual cocaine use, others were thought to have been present even before the person started using the drug, making it more likely he or she would become a drug addict.
We found an altered right/left relationship in a part of the frontal cortex that was also associated with altered judgment and decision-making in addicts, study author Dr. Hans Breiter, from Massachusetts General Hospital, was quoted as saying. We further found that the overall brain thickness in the cocaine addicts was more uniform across the brain, which is quite different from what is observed in non-drug users.
Since the latter differences did not correlate with any measure of drug use, he believes both cause and effect are at play. Together, this set of findings point to predisposing factors being a potential contributing factor to the addiction.
SOURCE: Neuron, published online October 8, 2008
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