Your Brain on Alcohol
A new understanding of how alcohol alters brain chemistry may transform treatment of the disease
[Drawing is not available.]
[Drawing labels:]
Nucleus Accumbens 1
Pleasure
Once in the bloodstream, alcohol heads for the nucleus accumbens. The brain's most primitive center. It looks to satisfy hunger, thirst, and lust. Alcohol stimulates pleasure, and human beings tend to repeat any action that provides pleasure.
Frontal Cortex 2
Memory
Where we learn about the world, make judgments, and control impulses. After years of drinking, the initial hit of pleasure becomes old hat, but the frontal cortex has encoded a memory of the experience of pleasure.
Basal Ganglia 3
Compulsion
This area controls movement, repetitive tasks, and, in the extreme, obsessive/compulsive behaviors. Some researchers believe that alcohol may capture the same pathways as does O/C disorder, leading to compulsive drinking despite the drinker's wish to stop.
Amygdala 4
Stress relief
Helps the body respond to stress. Alcoholism in some may start because it calms stress. But continued abuse may alter brain chemistry to chart a course of encoded memory and compulsive use.
Source: Raymond Anton, Medical University of South Carolina
Rod Little--USN&WR
A Triggered Response
All addictive drugs affect the neurotransmitter dopamine, one of several brain chemicals that make us feel pleasure. Alcohol in low doses stimulates neurons, one reason that people feel high. In higher doses it depresses them, leasing to drowsiness.
[Drawing is not available.]
[Drawing labels] Neurotransmitter; Stimulated neuron; Depresses neuron
Visual Stimulants
Study participants viewed photos of alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks while lying in an MRI scanner. The picture of alcoholic beverages activated parts of the frontal cortex linked with attention and memory, mechanisms of craving, in the brains of alcoholics, but not in moderate drinkers.
The colored areas show that alcoholics paid a lot of attention to images of alcohol.
Alcoholic's response
Alcohol photo
Nonalcoholic's response
Images of non-alcoholic drinks did not attract much attention.
Alcoholic's response
Nonalcohol photo
Nonalcoholic's response
Where to Learn More
Treatment. For a list of programs as well as a discussion of approaches, visit the American Society of Addiction Medicine at www.asam.org.
Support. Find a comprehensive listing of support groups for alcoholics and their families at mentalhelp.net/selfhelp.
AA. Track down a nearby meeting at www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.
Questions. For answers to questions such as how to tell if you are an alcoholic, see www.niaaa.nih.gov.
U.S. News spoke to dozens of alcoholics. Some agreed to be fully identified, others by their first names only. For those who requested confidentiality, fictional names are used.
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