Author Archives: RichardB

Addiction Hijacks the Brain

27 Wednesday Sep 2023

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You’ve probably heard of the brain’s reward network. It’s activated by basic needs — including food, water and sex — and releases a surge of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine when those needs are met. But it can also be hijacked by drugs, which lead to a greater dopamine release than those basic needs.

But the reward network isn’t the only brain network altered by drug use. A new review concluded that drug addiction affects six main brain networks: the reward, habit, salience, executive, memory and self-directed networks.

In 2016, a total of 20.1 million people ages 12 and older in the U.S. had a substance-use disorder, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an annual survey on drug use. And drug addiction, regardless of the substance used, had surprisingly similar effects on the addicted brain, said the review, published in the journal Neuron.

The review looked at more than 100 studies and review papers on drug addiction, all of which studied a type of brain scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

More than half of the studies out there look at the effects of drug use on the reward network, said Anna Zilverstand, lead author of the new review and an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

“Because we showed that the effects are very distributed across the six different networks … [we can conclude that] an approach that only looks at one of these networks isn’t really justified,” Zilverstand told Live Science. “This [finding] will hopefully lead other researchers to look beyond the reward network.”

For example, the memory network is pretty much ignored in research on substance-use disorders, Zilverstand said. This network allows humans to learn non-habit-based things, such as a new physics concept or a history lesson. Some research has suggested that in people with substance-use disorders, stress shifts the person’s learning and memory away from the memory network to the habit network, which drives automatic behavior, such as seeking and taking drugs.

Another less-studied network is the self-directed network, which is involved in self-awareness and self-reflection, the review said. In people with addictions, this network has been associated with increasing craving.

Two other networks are involved in substance-use disorders: The executive network is normally responsible for goal-maintaining and execution, but drugs can alter this network as well, reducing a person’s ability to inhibit their actions. The salience network picks up important cues in a person’s environment and redirects the individual’s attention to them. (In people with drug addiction, attention is redirected toward drugs, increasing craving and drug-seeking.)

Which comes first, the brain activity or the drug use?

“For me, the most surprising [finding] was how consistent the effects were across addictions,” Zilverstand said. What’s more, “the fact that the effects are quite independent of the specific drug use points to them being something general that might actually precede drug use rather than be a consequence of drug use.”

Zilverstand said she hopes that more studies will look at whether some people have abnormal brain activity in these six networks naturally and if that activity just gets exacerbated if they begin drug use. It’s important to know if some of these traits precede drug use; if that’s the case, it might be possible to identify people who are prone to addiction and intervene before an addiction begins, she said.

Some research has pointed toward this possibility already. For example, studies have shown that some people have “difficulties … inhibiting impulsiveness before drug use,” Zilverstand said. “Some of these impairments precede drug use, and they may become worse with more drug use, but they exist before the problem escalates.”

The good news, however, is that activity in four of these networks — executive, reward, memory and salience — moves back toward “normal” once drug use ends. “We know that four of the networks (partially — not fully) recover but not yet what happens to the other two networks,” Zilverstand said in an email.

Zilverstand added that she’s particularly excited about an ongoing study called the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which is tracking 10,000 children across the U.S. from around ages 9 or 10 to age 20 (the children are now around 13). Some of these individuals will inevitably become addicted to drugs, most likely marijuana or alcohol, Zilverstand said.

“We’ll be able to see if the effects that we found [in the review] exist in youth who have not yet abused drugs,” she said, and she predicted that researchers will be able to find a lot of the effects identified in the review in the six brain networks.

The authors noted that because some regions of the brain are very small — for example, the amygdala, which is found toward the center of the brain — the studies can’t identify strong signals from those areas on brain scans. So, it’s possible that drugs affect additional networks in the brain that are hidden because of the limitations of our technologies, Zilverstand said.

“We don’t want to conclude that [those effects] don’t exist,” she said.

Positive Me

24 Sunday Sep 2023

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Most people know me as a generally positive glass haft full kinda person. And it’s true, I see most everything in a positive light. This has pissed and angered more than a few over the years. Not really sure why, I suppose they expect me to react and respond to things, people, and places the way they do…. but I don’t, never have, never will.

We have the power to define the meaning of events in our lives.

I learned this as a very young child from my aunties who would visit every summer to help my mom “deal” with me. As an autistic with a heart condition who preferred tree contact more than human contact my mom struggled to know what to do with me. Of course she didn’t have to deal or do, but to just let me be …. which she eventually did (mostly).

My positivity seems to have increased over the years, (if that’s even possible). After heart surgery, multiple brain surgeries, occasional homelessness, and numerous threats of violence I remain optimistic, upbeat, and hopeful.

We do have the power to define the meaning of events in our lives. People, places, and things.

Looking out my window at the sunset

Ways to increase happiness

20 Wednesday Sep 2023

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The most important question to ask when you feel down

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like your brain wants you to be happy. You may feel guilty or shameful. Why?

Believe it or not, guilt and shame activate the brain’s reward center.

Despite their differences, pride, shame, and guilt all activate similar neural circuits, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and the nucleus accumbens. Interestingly, pride is the most powerful of these emotions at triggering activity in these regions — except in the nucleus accumbens, where guilt and shame win out. This explains why it can be so appealing to heap guilt and shame on ourselves — they’re activating the brain’s reward center.

And you worry a lot, too. Why? In the short term, worrying makes your brain feel a little better — at least you’re doing something about your problems.

In fact, worrying can help calm the limbic system by increasing activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and decreasing activity in the amygdala. That might seem counterintuitive, but it just goes to show that if you’re feeling anxiety, doing something about it — even worrying — is better than doing nothing.

But guilt, shame, and worry are horrible, long-term solutions. So what do neuroscientists say you should do? Ask yourself this question:

What am I grateful for?

Yeah, gratitude is awesome … but does it really affect your brain at the biological level? Yup.

You know what the antidepressant Wellbutrin does? Boosts the neurotransmitter dopamine. So does gratitude.

The benefits of gratitude start with the dopamine system, because feeling grateful activates the brain stem region that produces dopamine. Additionally, gratitude toward others increases activity in social dopamine circuits, which makes social interactions more enjoyable …

Know what Prozac does? Boosts the neurotransmitter serotonin. So does gratitude.

One powerful effect of gratitude is that it can boost serotonin. Trying to think of things you are grateful for forces you to focus on the positive aspects of your life. This simple act increases serotonin production in the anterior cingulate cortex.

I know, sometimes life lands a really mean punch in the gut and it feels like there’s nothing to be grateful for. Guess what?

Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to find anything. It’s the searching that counts.

It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. Remembering to be grateful is a form of emotional intelligence. One study found that it actually affected neuron density in both the ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortex. These density changes suggest that as emotional intelligence increases, the neurons in these areas become more efficient. With higher emotional intelligence, it simply takes less effort to be grateful.

And gratitude doesn’t just make your brain happy — it can also create a positive feedback loop in your relationships. So express that gratitude to the people you care about.

For more on how gratitude can make you happier and more successful.

But what happens when bad feelings completely overtake you? When you’re really in the dumps and don’t even know how to deal with it? There’s an easy answer …

Label negative feelings

You feel awful. OK, give that awfulness a name. Sad? Anxious? Angry?

Boom. It’s that simple. Sound stupid? Your noggin disagrees.

In one fMRI study, appropriately titled “Putting Feelings into Words” participants viewed pictures of people with emotional facial expressions. Predictably, each participant’s amygdala activated to the emotions in the picture. But when they were asked to name the emotion, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activated and reduced the emotional amygdala reactivity. In other words, consciously recognizing the emotions reduced their impact.

Suppressing emotions doesn’t work and can backfire on you.

Gross found that people who tried to suppress a negative emotional experience failed to do so. While they thought they looked fine outwardly, inwardly their limbic system was just as aroused as without suppression, and in some cases, even more aroused. Kevin Ochsner, at Columbia, repeated these findings using an fMRI. Trying not to feel something doesn’t work, and in some cases even backfires.

But labeling, on the other hand, makes a big difference.

To reduce arousal, you need to use just a few words to describe an emotion, and ideally use symbolic language, which means using indirect metaphors, metrics, and simplifications of your experience. This requires you to activate your prefrontal cortex, which reduces the arousal in the limbic system. Here’s the bottom line: describe an emotion in just a word or two, and it helps reduce the emotion.

Ancient methods were way ahead of us on this one. Meditation has employed this for centuries. Labeling is a fundamental tool of mindfulness.

Make that decision

Ever make a decision and then your brain finally feels at rest? That’s no random occurrence.

Brain science shows that making decisions reduces worry and anxiety — as well as helping you solve problems.

Making decisions includes creating intentions and setting goals — all three are part of the same neural circuitry and engage the prefrontal cortex in a positive way, reducing worry and anxiety. Making decisions also helps overcome striatum activity, which usually pulls you toward negative impulses and routines. Finally, making decisions changes your perception of the world — finding solutions to your problems and calming the limbic system.

But deciding can be hard. I agree. So what kind of decisions should you make? Neuroscience has an answer.

Make a “good enough” decision. Don’t sweat making the absolute 100% best decision. We all know being a perfectionist can be stressful. And brain studies back this up.

Trying to be perfect overwhelms your brain with emotions and makes you feel out of control.

Trying for the best, instead of good enough, brings too much emotional ventromedial prefrontal activity into the decision-making process. In contrast, recognizing that good enough is good enough activates more dorsolateral prefrontal areas, which helps you feel more in control …

So when you make a decision, your brain feels you have control. And, as I’ve talked about before, a feeling of control reduces stress. But here’s what’s really fascinating: Deciding also boosts pleasure.

Actively choosing caused changes in attention circuits and in how the participants felt about the action, and it increased rewarding dopamine activity.

We don’t just choose the things we like; we also like the things we choose.

Touch people

No, not indiscriminately; that can get you in a lot of trouble.

But we need to feel love and acceptance from others. When we don’t it’s painful. And I don’t mean “awkward” or “disappointing.” I mean actually painful.

Neuroscientists did a study where people played a ball-tossing video game. The other players tossed the ball to you and you tossed it back to them. Actually, there were no other players; that was all done by the computer program.

But the subjects were told the characters were controlled by real people. So what happened when the “other players” stopped playing nice and didn’t share the ball?

Subjects’ brains responded the same way as if they experienced physical pain. Rejection doesn’t just hurt like a broken heart; your brain feels it like a broken leg.

In fact, as demonstrated in an fMRI experiment, social exclusion activates the same circuitry as physical pain … at one point they stopped sharing, only throwing back and forth to each other, ignoring the participant. This small change was enough to elicit feelings of social exclusion, and it activated the anterior cingulate and insula, just like physical pain would.

Relationships are important to your brain’s feeling of happiness. Want to take that to the next level? Touch people.

One of the primary ways to release oxytocin is through touching. Obviously, it’s not always appropriate to touch most people, but small touches like handshakes and pats on the back are usually okay. For people you’re close with, make more of an effort to touch more often.

Touching is incredibly powerful. We just don’t give it enough credit. It makes you more persuasive, increases team performance, improves your flirting … heck, it even boosts math skills.

Touching someone you love actually reduces pain. In fact, when studies were done on married couples, the stronger the marriage, the more powerful the effect.

In addition, holding hands with someone can help comfort you and your brain through painful situations. One fMRI study scanned married women as they were warned that they were about to get a small electric shock. While anticipating the painful shocks, the brain showed a predictable pattern of response in pain and worrying circuits, with activation in the insula, anterior cingulate, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. During a separate scan, the women either held their husbands’ hands or the hand of the experimenter. When a subject held her husband’s hand, the threat of shock had a smaller effect. The brain showed reduced activation in both the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — that is, less activity in the pain and worrying circuits. In addition, the stronger the marriage, the lower the discomfort-related insula activity.

Sum up

Here’s what brain research says will make you happy:

  • Ask “What am I grateful for?” No answers? Doesn’t matter. Just searching helps.
  • Label those negative emotions. Give it a name and your brain isn’t so bothered by it.
  • Decide. Go for “good enough” instead of ‘best decision ever made on Earth.”
  • Hugs, hugs, hugs. Don’t text — touch.

Addictive habits and the brain

13 Wednesday Sep 2023

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The notion that “one size fits all” when applying drug treatments to addiction is challenged by a published in the journal Biological Psychiatry that investigates pharmacotherapies for cocaine addiction.

Currently, medication for drug addicts is prescribed in the same way for all patients, regardless of the extent of their addiction. The new study uses cocaine addiction – for which there are currently no Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drug therapies – to study whether treatment is more or less responsive at different stages of addiction.

Increasingly, evidence suggests that addiction is caused by a convergence of different “neurobiological adaptations” that result in an eventual loss of control over drug-seeking behaviors. Cocaine, for instance, impairs the processes that govern impulse control but also promotes drug-seeking habits.

The adaptations within the brain triggered by addictive drugs include reduced metabolic activity and reduced production of dopamine – the hormone that controls the brain’s reward and pleasure centers.

At some point, over the course of addiction, a brain region called the nucleus accumbens takes over from the dorsolateral striatum (DLS) in managing control behaviors – systems that are both involved in the production of dopamine. As the nucleus accumbens is responsible for processing reward and the DLS is involved in habits, this shift results in a behavior change that favors high impulsivity and compulsive drug seeking.

To study how the DLS, impulsivity and phase of addiction of a subject influence their responsiveness to drug interventions, the researchers behind the new study – from the University of Cambridge in the UK – conducted an experiment in an animal model.

The rats that were in an early phase of addiction were not affected by the treatment. Instead, it was the animals who had a longer history of self-administering cocaine that exhibited the greatest change in behavior.

First, the “impulsivity” of 40 male rats was measured using a task in which rats were trained to self-administer food pellets by pushing open a panel during allocated periods signaled to the rats using a light.

Next, these rats were trained to press a lever to self-administer cocaine dissolved in water. The extent to which the rats exhibited cocaine-seeking behavior – for instance, repeatedly pressing the lever, even when cocaine was not delivered – was monitored by the researchers.

The team then administered a dopamine receptor-blocking drug called α-flupenthixol directly into the DLS of rats at various phases of addiction.

Also, the rats that were in an early phase of addiction were not affected by the treatment. Instead, it was the animals that had a longer history of self-administering cocaine that exhibited the greatest change in behavior.

Dr. John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry, says the results show that dopamine receptor blockers play a role in treatment of addiction, but only at particular phases of the addiction process.

“The notion that particular brain mechanisms are engaged only at particular phases of the addiction process strikes me as an important insight that has yet to be harnessed in developing new medications for addiction treatment,” he says.

“The results of this study are important because they show that although both impulsive and non-impulsive rats developed cocaine-seeking habits, this was delayed in high impulsive rats,” adds first author Dr. Jennifer Murray. She continues:

“It is suggested that vulnerability to addiction conferred by impulsivity is less influenced by the propensity to develop drug-seeking habits and more by the inability of an individual to regain control over these habits that are rigidly and maladaptively established in the brain.”

My Playlists

12 Tuesday Sep 2023

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Every year for the past 15 years I have curated a playlist of my most listened to songs of the year. In the beginning, in 2008, it was music from my own rather massive collect but somewhere along the line I switched to newly discovered music I find on YouTube.
YouTube has about 2 billion monthly users who listen to music. If you aren’t putting some sort of posting of your music on YouTube you are massively limiting your reach.

My Playlists
I currently have about 800 subscriptions to music labels (big and small), as well as individual artists and bands. Each year I listen to about 1200 songs and reduce that to a maximum of 54 songs. I wrap the playlist up by December 31, although I did not finish the 2022 list until the second week of January 2023.

Currently working on the 2023 playlist and here is a song from the 2023 curated favorites song playlist: Margaret Glaspy – Get Back

Groups

06 Wednesday Sep 2023

Posted by in Therapy

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The lives of individuals are shaped, for better or worse, by their experiences in groups. People are born into groups. Throughout life, they join groups. They will influence and be influenced by family, religious, social, and cultural groups that constantly shape behavior, self-image, and both physical and mental health.

Groups can support individual members in times of pain and trouble, and they can help people grow in ways that are healthy and creative. However, groups also can support deviant behavior or influence an individual to act in ways that are unhealthy or destructive.

Because our need for human contact is biologically determined, we are, from the start, social creatures. This propensity to congregate is a powerful therapeutic tool. Formal therapy groups can be a compelling source of persuasion, stabilization, and support. Groups organized around therapeutic goals can enrich members with insight and guidance; and during times of crisis, groups can comfort and guide people who otherwise might be unhappy or lost. In the hands of a skilled, well-trained group leader, the potential curative forces inherent in a group can be harnessed and directed to foster healthy attachments, provide positive peer reinforcement, act as a forum for self-expression, and teach new social skills. In short, group therapy can provide a wide range of therapeutic services, comparable in efficacy to those delivered in individual therapy. In some cases, group therapy can be more beneficial than individual therapy ( Scheidlinger 2000; Toseland and Siporin 1986).

Group therapy and addiction treatment are natural allies. One reason is that people who abuse substances often are more likely to remain abstinent and committed to recovery when treatment is provided in groups, apparently because of rewarding and therapeutic forces such as affiliation, confrontation, support, gratification, and identification. This capacity of group therapy to bond patients to treatment is an important asset because the greater the amount, quality, and duration of treatment, the better the client’s prognosis (Leshner 1997; Project MATCH Research Group 1997).

The effectiveness of group therapy in the treatment of substance abuse also can be attributed to the nature of addiction and several factors associated with it, including (but not limited to) depression, anxiety, isolation, denial, shame, temporary cognitive impairment, and character pathology (personality disorder, structural deficits, or an un-cohesive sense of self). Whether a person abuses substances or not, these problems often respond better to group treatment than to individual therapy (Kanas 1982; Kanas and Barr 1983). Group therapy is also effective because people are fundamentally relational creatures.

Some solutions for Homelessness

26 Saturday Aug 2023

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There are many solutions to homelessness, including:
Permanent supportive housing
Federal housing assistance, such as public housing and Section 8 vouchers
Increasing access to job training and employment
Helping people pay for housing in the short term
Helping people access services to stay in housing
Preventing homelessness by helping people find alternate housing arrangements
Homelessness can expose people to serious health risks and make it difficult to access health care.

Honesty Handout: Lies

23 Wednesday Aug 2023

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1. Figure out why you lie and who you lie to. We’ve all lied at one time or another, to different people, to ourselves, and for different reasons. But coming up with a systematic plan for becoming more honest will be difficult unless you try to define those reasons and those people for yourself.

Lies to make ourselves look better might include exaggerations, embellishments, and flat-out tall-tales we tell to others, and ourselves, to make ourselves feel better about our inadequacies. When you’re unhappy about something, it’s much easier to fill it in with lies than tell the truth.
o We lie to peers we think are better than us, because we want them to respect us as we respect them. Unfortunately, being dishonest is disrespectful in the long run. Give people more credit for their ability to empathize and understand you on a deeper level.
Lies that avoid embarrassment might include lies told to cover up bad behaviors, transgressions, or any activity we’re not proud of. If your mom found a pack of cigarettes in your jacket, you might lie and say that they’re your friend’s to avoid punishment.
We lie to authoritative figures to avoid embarrassment and punishment, including ourselves. When we’ve done something we feel guilty about, lies are told to eliminate the guilt, avoid the punishments, and get back to the objectionable behavior we’re forced to lie about. It’s a vicious cycle.

2. Anticipate behaviors that will make you feel guilty. To break the chain of embarrassment and lying, it’s important to learn to anticipate things that you’ll likely feel guilty about in the future, and avoid those behaviors. When you lie, you’re covering up some uncomfortable truth that’s more easily couched in a lie. You can either get comfortable with the truth, or abandon the behavior that makes you embarrassed.
If you smoke cigarettes, you won’t have to lie if everyone knows it’s true. Own up to it. If a behavior is un-own-upable, it’s probably best to avoid it. It would be humiliating for your wife to find out that you had an inappropriate relationship with a coworker, but you won’t have to lie if you don’t do it.

3. Avoid situations in which you’ll have to lie for others. Be wary when someone tells you something in confidence that you know that you should share with someone else (e.g., knowledge of a crime, a lie, or a harmful act against another). Hearing such information puts you in a difficult position, especially when the truth eventually emerges and reveals to the affected person that you knew all along.
If someone begins a sentence with “Don’t tell so-and-so about this, okay?” be prepared to offer your own disclaimer: “If it’s something that I’d want to know about were I them, then please don’t tell me. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s secrets but my own.”