Pubdate: Fri, 26 Jan 2001
Source: Reuters Health
Copyright: 2001 Reuters
Author: Amy Norton

BRAIN SCANS REVEAL HOME OF COCAINE CRAVING

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A specific brain area appears to leap into
action when cocaine addicts have a craving for the drug, researchers
have found. They suggest this ability to give drug-craving a physical
source could lead to new therapies for addiction.

In a study of 11 cocaine-dependent adults and 21 healthy study
participants, investigators found that the cocaine addicts showed high
activity in a specific brain area when they viewed a tape designed to
trigger craving for the drug. This activity did not show up in
non-addicts' brains.

In addition, the researchers discovered that the addicts' brains
responded differently to emotional scenes. When the study participants
viewed tapes of happy or sad scenarios, the two groups showed
different brain activity patterns. But their patterns were similar in
one potentially important manner: cocaine addicts' brain activity
during craving closely resembled healthy participants' brain activity
when they were sad.

This suggests cocaine craving and "normal" bad feelings may be
linked in the brain, according to Dr. Bruce E. Wexler and his
colleagues at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven,
Connecticut. They report their findings in the January issue of the
American Journal of Psychiatry.

Through imaging techniques that recorded brain activity as the study
participants viewed the tapes, Wexler's team linked craving to a brain
area called the anterior cingulate. Wexler told Reuters Health that it
may be possible to use imaging of this brain area to objectively chart
an addicts' progress in recovery.

In addition, he said, researchers may be able to pinpoint which
neurotransmitters activate the craving-linked brain area, and develop
drugs that block the neurotransmitters.

The fact that the healthy participants' "sad" responses shared the
same brain activity with the addicts' craving response also suggest
that drug-craving is linked to emotion, according to Wexler.

"Is craving a variant on some other emotion?" he said, noting that
if researchers can better understand exactly what craving is, they
could come up with better ways to approach it.

SOURCE - American Journal of Psychiatry 2001;158:86-95.
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