Study: Cocaine Rewires Brain After Just One Use Robin Wilkey - The Huffington Post
go to original August 28, 2013

A new study at UC San Francisco's Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center has revealed that cocaine may rewire the brain and drastically affect decision-making after just one use.

While similar studies have revealed such rewiring in long-term use, the new study's results are especially alarming, showing that the brain can be altered after one dose.

Using live mice, researchers from both UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley studied the frontal lobe - the area of the brain that handles decision-making and memory - when cocaine was introduced to the body. After one dose, researchers found substantial growth of new dendritic spines, which are "tiny, twig-like structures that connect neurons and form the nodes of the brain’s circuit wiring."

According to researchers, these new spines rewired the brain to seek cocaine, explaining why the search for the drug might override other priorities in human users.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post

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