The brain-addiction connection : Neurons and neurotransmitters
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As I’d mentioned in an earlier post, while many people experiment with, or use, drugs at some point in their lives, only a small percentage (between 10%-15%) develop chronic drug abuse and dependence problems. While some of the specifics of what makes one person more likely to move from recreational use to addiction are still being investigated and hotly debated, we do know quite a lot about what happens in the brain when drug are used.
Before I can go into the specifics of the brain-addiction connection…
We need a little background on the way the brain works:
The brain is in essence a very complex network of interconnected fibers (neurons) and their maintenance and support structures. The brain contains about 10,000,000,000,000 (10 trillion) of these cells, and they each make many connections.
The left end of the neuron in the picture on the right is called the dendrite; this is the neuron’s main information receiving hub. The long part extending to the right is called an axon, and it ends in axon terminals that eventually connect to other neurons’ dendrites.
This is the basic way in which everything that happens in the brain is communicated, including our thoughts, feelings, movements, and memories!!! Dendrite to axon, to axon terminals, to dendrites, and back to step 1. How this transmission is achieved within the neuron is not necessary for this discussion; let’s just say that you should eat your bananas and make sure you always have some potassium, sodium, and calcium in your body…
How do the neurons talk to one another?
What is important for us is the way these neurons transfer information across the gap between the axon terminals and their connecting dendrites. This is achieved by chemicals called neurotransmitters. There are quite a few of these, but the main ones we’re going to be concerned with are serotonin, adrenaline, GABA, and dopamine as these are some of the major players in drug addiction (especially dopamine).
When a neuron wants to send a signal to its neighbor, it releases packets of a neurotransmitter (most axon terminals release only one specific neurotransmitter), and these are received by specialized receptors at the dendrites of the receiving neuron. If enough neurotransmitter is released and enough receptors are activated, the signal starts again and the cycle continues…
Neurotrasnmitters and drug use
Most abused drugs disrupt some combination of factors within this mechanism to produce both the intended, and unintended, effects they are known for.
Alright, that’s probably enough to absorb for now, more on what specific drugs do to interrupt this process soon!
Question:
How many of you knew about the ways in which drugs affect the brain? Would you mind sharing the things you’ve learned and where you’d learned them?
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Tags: addiction, Brain, brain addiction, dopamine, drug effects, Drugs, neurotransmitters
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