{"id":9972,"date":"2013-08-26T05:05:41","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T05:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/cocaine-rapidly-changes-the-brain\/"},"modified":"2013-08-26T05:05:25","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T05:05:25","slug":"cocaine-rapidly-changes-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/cocaine-rapidly-changes-the-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Cocaine &#8216;Rapidly Changes the Brain&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{{Taking cocaine can change the structure of the brain within hours in what could be the first steps of drug addiction, according to US researchers.}}<\/p>\n<p>Animal tests, reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience, showed new structures linked to learning and memory began to grow soon after the drug was taken.<\/p>\n<p>Mice with the most brain changes showed a greater preference for cocaine.<\/p>\n<p>Experts described it as the brain &#8220;learning addiction&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The team at University of California, Berkeley and UC San Francisco looked for tiny protrusions from brain cells called dendritic spines. They are heavily implicated in memory formation.<\/p>\n<p>{{Cocaine hunting}}<\/p>\n<p>The place or environment that drugs are taken plays an important role in addiction.<\/p>\n<p>In the experiments, the mice were allowed to explore freely two very different chambers &#8211; each with a different smell and surface texture.<\/p>\n<p>Once they had picked a favourite they were injected with cocaine in the other chamber.<\/p>\n<p>A type of laser microscopy was used to look inside the brains of living mice to hunt for the dendritic spines.<\/p>\n<p>More new spines were produced when the mice were injected with cocaine than with water, suggesting new memories being formed around drug use.<\/p>\n<p>The difference could be detected two hours after the first dose.<\/p>\n<p>Researcher Linda Wilbrecht, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley, said: &#8220;Our images provide clear evidence that cocaine induces rapid gains in new spines, and the more spines the mice gain, the more they show they learned about the drug.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This gives us a possible mechanism for how drug use fuels further drug-seeking behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These drug-induced changes in the brain may explain how drug-related cues come to dominate decision making in a human drug user.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-3465 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/4-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{{Taking cocaine can change the structure of the brain within hours in what could be the first steps of drug addiction, according to US researchers.}} Animal tests, reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience, showed new structures linked to learning and memory began to grow soon after the drug was taken. Mice with the most brain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9972"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9972"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}