Researchers Find Functional Differences in Brains of Cocaine Users

A new collaborative scientific study between the University of Texas at Galveston (UTMB; Galveston, TX, USA) and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU; Richmond, VA, USA), published in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical, has found differences in brain function between people addicted to cocaine, and people who are not addicted.

The researchers enrolled 13 cocaine users, and 10 non-cocaine users for the study, and evaluated their brain connectivity using a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) technique called Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM). They used DCM to decipher the connections, and the direction of information flow between regions of the brain, in both cocaine and non-cocaine users, and found intriguing differences in the strength of communication between key brain structures, between the two groups.

Lead author of the study, Kathryn A. Cunningham, said, “These findings suggest that, while some cortical brain regions show altered activity in cocaine users, other regions may compensate for cocaine-associated deficits in function. Targeting altered brain connections in cocaine use disorder for therapeutic development is a fresh idea, offering a whole new arena for research and the potential to promote abstinence and prevent relapse in these vulnerable individuals.”

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