THE SCIENCE OF ADDICTION
YOUR BRAIN CELLS ARE DESIGNED TO FORGET YOUR NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS
We know that some things are addictive, but WHY are they addictive? What’s the mechanism at work, to make us fail in our self-control?
Your brain cells are at war with one another. Scientists have shown that reason and bad habits divide the nerves into two teams that are constantly battling for control of your behaviour. The winners determine whether you can control yourself or give in to the craving. However, your brain is designed to let the compliant nerves gain a lead, and after only one day, unwise behaviour may become irresistibly tempting. The bad habits manipulate your innermost thoughts and intoxicate you to forget all reason. Willpower and patience are usually the way to beat addiction, but scientists emphasise that some brains give in more easily than others. But armed with the most recent knowledge about addiction, scientists hope to find treatments that will allow everybody to get rid of their worst bad habits.
BRAIN DESIGNED FOR ADDICTION
The human brain is pre-programmed to become addicted. A network of brain cells are constantly ready to provide you with a feeling of happiness, when you engage in anything from eating cream puffs to spontaneous online shopping. But the integrated reward system is not only there to give us bad habits. The overwhelming rush is necessary, not only for us, but for the survival of our species, as it makes us want to eat, drink, sleep, and have children. The complex network of happiness nerve cells stretches across most of the brain. Some of the most important elements of the
system are the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens.
When the ventral tegmentum is activated due to sensory impressions or certain substances that enter the brain via the blood, a signal is sent on to the nucleus accumbens, and that is the signal that we experience as joy. The signal between the two brain regions is transmitted when long offshoots of the nerve cells of the ventral tegmentum release the dopamine neurotransmitter directly into the nucleus accumbens. There, dopamine binds to the surface of the region’s nerve cells, where a series of proteins trigger an electric impulse. Apart from providing us with an immediate rush, the reward system also sees to it that the emotion is stored in our memory, so we will remember what made us happy and try to obtain it again. Unfortunately, the system makes us the easy victims of unhealthy temptation, and according to a recent experiment, the bad habits make the brain forget what is good for us.
DOPAMINE REVEALS REASON
Last year, an American scientist, Susan Courtney, asked 20 test subjects to find red figures on a computer screen full of figures of different colours. When they found a red figure, they received $1.50. In their efforts to earn as much as possible, the test subjects were not surprisingly particularly attentive to the red figures, and they were able to identify them very quickly. The surprise came the next day, when scientists changed the rules of the experiment. Now, the participants were to forget about colours, looking for figures with specific shapes instead. Moreover, they did not get any money, no matter what they found. The experiment showed that the test subjects could not forget the expectation of a reward in connection with red figures, so every time a red figure appeared, they focused their attention at it. Brain scans also revealed that at the same time, dopamine was released in the brain’s reward centre.
In only one day, the brain had developed a behaviour that remained, even though it did not pay off. The bad habit even prevented the participants from carrying out their new task efficiently. Such experiments show that