Word: pets
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...that tobacco executives have come to the bargaining table. Consider the state of Missouri, which so far has steered clear of the tobacco suits. "I expect us to get in," Governor Mel Carnahan says. Why now? If there's a windfall, Carnahan would like a slice to fund a pet program to cover kids who lack health insurance. Good politics, that...
Indeed, the brain has many devious tricks for ensuring that the irrational act of taking drugs, deemed "good" because it enhances dopamine, will be repeated. pet-scan images taken by Volkow and her colleagues reveal that the absorption of a cocaine-like chemical by neurons is profoundly reduced in cocaine addicts in contrast to normal subjects. One explanation: the addicts' neurons, assaulted by abnormally high levels of dopamine, have responded defensively and reduced the number of sites (or receptors) to which dopamine can bind. In the absence of drugs, these nerve cells probably experience a dopamine deficit, Volkow speculates...
...PET-SCAN images of the brains of recovering cocaine addicts reveal other striking changes, including a dramatically impaired ability to process glucose, the primary energy source for working neurons. Moreover, this impairment--which persists for up to 100 days after withdrawal--is greatest in the prefrontal cortex, a dopamine-rich area of the brain that controls impulsive and irrational behavior. Addicts, in fact, display many of the symptoms shown by patients who have suffered strokes or injuries to the prefrontal cortex. Damage to this region, University of Iowa neurologist Antonio Damasio and his colleagues have demonstrated, destroys the emotional compass...
...psychosocial interventions, ranging from psychotherapy to 12-step programs, can and do help. Cognitive therapy, which seeks to supply people with coping skills (exercising after work instead of going to a bar, for instance), appears to hold particular promise. After just 10 weeks of therapy, before-and-after pet scans suggest, some patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (which has some similarities with addiction) manage to resculpt not only their behavior but also activity patterns in their brain...
...image was produced in a two-step process. First the researchers used pet scans, which measure how well cells are functioning, to probe the brains of dozens of people in the active throes of depression. Then they merged the results and compared them with those from a comparable number of normal patients. The pet scans showed a subtle but distinct difference: the subgenual prefrontal cortex was almost 8% less active in depressed patients than in the controls...