This is Why Addiction is a Brain problem, Not a Person Problem

This will largely be a semantic argument. If you do not like semantic arguments, you can translate this into a philosophical discussion. If you think philosophy distracts from science, then you can examine on your own experien

Moving on, a recent post on the Psychology Today blogs discusses the mess that is the DSM V’s treatment of “addiction,” and specifically, the semantic nature of this treatment. What is addiction? Is it nothing more than something that one can’t help but do? Or do we need to add in understandings of consequence, perceived reward, frequency of activity, person and public usefulness, and so on?

For the most part, the word “addiction” has a negative connotation. This can used ironically to bolster something that is “so good,” such as an “addiction to chocolate.” The idea is that chocolate is so good, one would rather have it then not have the negative consequences of eating to too much. This is the parallel drawn with, for example, drug addiction: heroin feels so good, one would rather inject it than be healthy, keep a job, maintain personal relationships, and so on.

But there’s, of course, a huge difference between eating too much chocolate and taking drugs. Ostensibly, a person who eats a lot of chocolate, when told he had become a diabetic, could wean himself off of candy bars in the hopes of prolonging his life. The drug addict can’t do this, according to the definition of the word. Therefore, the word addiction requires an understanding of a lack of free will.

Take the word addiction out of the discussion, and what do we have left. We have a person who is being forced to do things that he doesn’t want to do. Or, to be precise, does not want to want to do. You could say the person is a slave. How do we emancipate people from being forced to take drugs?

The simple answer is, to free them. Give them back their free will. Its society that responds to heavy drug use by removing junkies from jobs, from families, puts them in jail. The irony is, if the drug user does not have to choose between drugs or society’s approval, then taking drugs is not a choice.

However, heavy drug use is physically damaging, and that’s not something society can simply choose to deny the truth of. But, if addiction is viewed as a medical problem, not a social problem, then access to medical care can treat said physical damage. And in the process, help the addicted choose to be free of drugs.

This blog post is not advocating the legalization of drugs. It is advocating for the abandonment of judgmental attitudes.

ces reflect on this discussion. If you think anecdotal phenomena are irrelevant, then you can go crawl into a Skinner box and enjoy your life of pre-programmed cause and effect. We guarantee you will enjoy it, as that is how your brain, for you, literally works.

Delegating the Brain’s Delegation

You’re busy. You’ve got things to do. You don’t have time for a lot of disorganization. So when you walk into the reception area of the hotel where you’re presenting a paper on neuroplasticity, you expect to see signs, pointing you to the various areas you need to go. Places like the executive center, so you can download a few slides and print them. And the coffee shop, so you grab a quick cup to fuel your talk. And of course, the restroom.

But what if the sign was garbled? What would you do? You’d ask someone-- but what if there’s no one behind the reception desk? You’d ask someone else. Another hotel patron, maybe, who, while not officially designated to give directions, might be able to point out the places you need.

A new paper in the Journal of Neuroscience suggest that the brain may be able to do the same kind of thing.

Your brain has different areas for recognizing faces and landscapes, and another part of your brain assigns attention to which ever area is required for a given task at hand. If you want to remember a face, for example, this latter area tells the landscape area to relax while telling the face area to pay attention.

Scientists showed test subjects pictures of faces overlaid on top of pictures of landscape. They had them concentrate on only one aspect of the picture to memorize it, all while the scientists used magnets to temporarily knock-out the “delegator” portion of the brain. With the delegator knocked out, subjects were still able to remember faces or landscapes as required.

They looked at brain scans while they did this, and found that a different part of the brain was acting as a temporary delegator. Note that this was not a learned response, something that had developed over time. We already know about the brain’s remarkable ability to rewire itself and compensate for damaged parts. Instead, this was an immediate taking-over of delegation activity.

That’s one take away. And it’s intriguing. The Neuroskeptic at Discover is a little more, well, skeptical. He points out that the study didn’t show for sure this reassignment, only that another part of the brain spoke up when the magnets didn’t keep delegation from happening. It might have been the case that the scientists were wrong about how much actually delegation the delegator does.

(In our hotel analogy above, that might be like the hotel patron drifting over to the sign you’re looking at, watching you read it.)

Nevertheless, it’s enough to warrant further studies which will give us even more data in a quest to understand out decision making processes.

You know, free will.