Author: dlende

Understanding Brain Imaging


By Chris Dudley, Matt Gasperetti, Mikey Narvaez, and Sarah Walorski

Do you remember the anti-drug public service announcement from the 1980s that showed an egg frying in a hot pan which represented your brain on drugs?

During the 1990s, brain imaging moved beyond fried eggs as computer technology allowed researchers to process large amounts of data required for functional imaging approaches. As a result, the PSA mentioned above no longer provides the most accurate analogy illustrating what happens to the brain when exposed to drugs.

Today, brain imaging research has helped create a sophisticated “disease model” of chemical dependence related to changes in the function of neurotransmitters and receptors in the brain. These circuits are responsible for reward processing, memory and learning, motivation and drive, in addition to control (Nora Volkow describes these circuits in a 2004 literature review).

This particular post focuses on the techniques used most commonly to study the brain’s role in addiction and other mental health problems. We will cover the principle behind each method, advantages and limitations of each, and provide an example of the results that can be obtained.

Beyond the Frying Pan: EEG and CT

Electroencephalography (EEG) and Computed tomography (CT) were two of the first methods used to study the brain. EEG utilizes electrodes placed on the scalp that measure electrical impulses, whereas CT creates a three-dimensional image of the brain with two-dimensional x-rays.

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Wednesday Round Up #10

Hierarchy

Anthropology.Net, The Social Brain Hypothesis: Are Our Brains Hardwired to Deal with Hierarchies?
Subconsciously processing dominance hierachies

Marc Dingman, Neuroimaging and the Social Ladder
Social hierarchy: can we see it in an fMRI?

Ira Flatow, Mapping the Social Brain
How the brain responds to social status

Constance Holder, A Head for Social Hierarchy
More on the work by Caroline Zink: superior players change our own thinking

Free Will

Cognitive Daily, Changing Belief in Free Will Can Cause Students to Cheat
No free will, more likely to cheat—if responsibility doesn’t count, who cares?

Foolish Green Ideas, Tight Fit
Very funny take on the “no free will” research

Brain Mechanisms

Chris/Mixing Memory, Emotion, Reason and Moral Judgment
Brain damage, moral scenarios, and general vs. personal rationality

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Inequality and Drug Use

By Mary Kate McNamara, Emily Schirack, Dana Sherry & Amy Vereecke

Close your eyes. Imagine a crack addict. What do you picture? A wealthy man in an Armani suit and tie? Or a poor man clothed in baggy jeans; violent, dark and dangerous? Is she seated behind a mahogany desk on the 22nd floor of an office building in Manhattan or is she standing on a graffiti-covered street corner in East Harlem?

We know that a person’s drug of choice is influenced by his or her social status, from the high-powered lawyer with a penchant for powder cocaine to the pill-popping rock star to the alcoholic factory worker to the unemployed crack head. Here we will show something more important about a person’s relationship with drugs: an individual’s decision to use drugs is embedded in an unequal social structure, a social structure that produces unequal outcomes for drug users contingent on their social status.

By being poor, under-educated and of a low-status ethnic group, a person is at a greater risk for not only social marginalization, but becoming a victim of addiction (Baer, Singer & Susser 2003: 131). As David Courtwright argues in Forces of Habit, social inequality is promoted by the elite to maintain control over a minority group of laborers. By suppressing the lower classes in a cycle of substance abuse and addiction, the wealthy are able to increase their own power and profits. At the expense of people they deem inferior—simply because these people lack the material means to rise from their position—the elite sustain their authority. “Next to profits and taxes, the utility of drugs in acquiring, pacifying and fleecing workers proved to be their greatest advantage to the elites…” (Courtwright 2001:135)

In analyzing society’s abuse of drugs, Courtwright comments that “a pattern of drug use can become so entrenched in a culture that it is impossible to permanently suppress and delegitimate it” (Courtwright 2001: 199). This entrenchment is facilitated by a cycle of poverty, inequality and addiction.

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The Genetic and Environmental Bases of Addiction

As Presented By: Reid, Takashi, Sheeva and Michael

A man with deep set eyes and a tired, drawn face wanders aisle to aisle, seemingly lost amongst the labyrinth of supermarket shelves. His bloodshot eyes, bent forward posture and slight stature are indicative of years of hard living. His pain is readily apparent as he nervously shifts his weight from one foot, to the other and then back again. He rolls up his sleeve to scratch an unseen itch, briefly revealing a patchwork of new and old needle marks along the veins of his forearms; intermeshed with a few cigarette burns and dry, yellowing skin. How did he get this way you might ask? What is it about this particular man that caused him to become an addict?

The Genetic Element

Today many people would say “his genes” predisposed him to become an addict. Addiction has historically been known as a disease that runs in families, and in the past 30 or 40 years, this long-standing belief has been verified using systematic scientific investigation. The bulk of the research suggests that drug dependence functions much like other diseases, with certain people having a genetic makeup that increases their risk.

This was the case for Caroline Knapp, an alcoholic who skillfully describes her battle and eventual victory over addiction in her book Drinking: A Love Story. Knapp struggles with her genetic predisposition saying, “It’s encoded in my DNA, embedded in my history, the product of some wild familial aberration.” This conclusion is not limited to Knapp. One study found that children of alcoholics were four times more likely to become alcoholics themselves.

Modern scientific inquiries tell us that the inheritance of these addictive tendencies cannot be attributed to a single gene, as is the case for some diseases. Its transmittance is much more complicated.

For instance, genes involved in the metabolism of alcohol can be implicated in increased risk of addiction. For instance a major study found that young men who required more alcohol to experience an effect had higher rates of alcohol problems later in life. However, other genes, including those known to affect behavior and mood, are thought to be connected with addiction as well (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Addiction). Currently, scientists point to differences in clusters of genes on chromosomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 15, and 16 as important in chemical dependence (Goldman Review).

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CeaseFire: Violence Prevention and Why Gary Slutkin Is An Anthropologist

Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist and physician at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is treating violence like an infection. Stop its transmission; get at the highest risk cases. And he’s doing that by acting like an anthropologist, using experiences and ideas culled from years working on public health projects in immigrant communities in the United States and in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. I just wish more anthropologists would act like him!

CeaseFire, a Chicago-based violence prevention program started by Slutkin, was featured in the New York Times Magazine yesterday, covered by Alex Kotlowitz in his excellent “Blocking the Transmission of Violence.” Kotlowitz focuses on the core feature that makes CeaseFire a different sort of program: the use of “violence interrupters.” These are men who have been through the streets, who have the contacts and know the code. They are men like Zale Hoddenbach, thirty eight, once active in gangs, then eight years in prison, now a fervent interrupter. These “hardened types” form the core of CeaseFire, living proof of change as well as men who can go places and talk to people that no public health PhD could ever imagine doing.

So why do I say he’s an anthropologist? Three reasons, really. First, Slutkin is critical of received ideas, in this case that punishment drives behavior: “He was convinced that longer sentences and more police officers had made little difference… ‘Copying and modeling and the social expectations of your peers is what drives your behavior’.” He sees this approach as more akin to stigmatization and moral punishment than effective policy: people are afraid, so they turn to old reactions “like putting people away, closing the place down, pushing the people out of town.” This combination of a critical cultural take on present practices, and an informed social perspective, makes his approach inherently anthropological.

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