Recovery of the Brain Following Addiction Needs More Attention

In the paper “Prolonged abstinence from cocaine or morphine disrupts separable valuations during decision conflict”, it is shown through a simulation on mice of real-world “economic” decisions that repeated exposure to cocaine can lead to a longer deliberative process when making an economic decision, with a propensity for making unwise economic decisions. The cocaine-exposed mice used in the study were mice that had recently been repeatedly-exposed to cocaine. There was no group of cocaine-exposed mice in the study who were given a long period of time in between their repeated exposure to cocaine and their participation in the study. A group of mice that had been given a period of recovery time in between their repeated exposure to cocaine and their participation in the study could model a huge portion of rehabilitated ex-drug users. This absence of a “rehabilitative” group lends itself to some questions: Would the “rehabilitative” group show diminished wait time compared to the mice recently exposed to cocaine when making economic decisions? Would the “rehabilitative” group make better economic decisions than the recently exposed group?

Ultimately, the question is whether the brain and its processes are able to recover over time from some, none, or all of the damage that addiction to a drug like cocaine can cause. One of the greatest known effects of cocaine use is the destruction of gray matter in the brain. Could short or long term abstinence from cocaine allow the brain to recover some of this lost gray matter?  The paper “Brain Structural and Functional Changes in Cocaine Users during Abstinence” attempts to address this question through scans of the brain in cocaine users grouped depending on how long they had been abstinent from the drug. Although there isn’t a huge sample of scans to compare the brains of cocaine users, the results still are of great importance, because it is a big part of what little we have recorded on this topic. It was found that gray matter concentrations in parts of the brain such as the frontal cortex and temporal cortex tended to be much higher in individuals who had been abstinent from cocaine for a month compared to recent cocaine users.

Both the frontal and temporal cortex play a huge role in making economic decisions like the decisions the mice in the paper “Prolonged abstinence from cocaine or morphine disrupts separable valuations during decision conflict” were having to make. With there being at least an apparent recovery of the brain during abstinence following cocaine addictions, it feels like one of the next steps in addiction-related research should be investigating exactly how much the brain can recover following addiction- and, how much this recovery affects actual human behaviors such as economic decision making.

Citations: Ray S (2016) “Brain Structural and Functional Changes in Cocaine Users during Abstinence.” J Alcohol Drug Depend 4:e134. doi:10.4172/2329-6488.1000e134

“Prolonged abstinence from cocaine or morphine disrupts separable valuations during decision conflict” Brian M. Sweis, A. David Redish & Mark J. Thomas