Scientists and experts have been showing a lot of interest in recent times in the chemicals and the pathways of the brain responsible for triggering drug-seeking behavior among many. Among the various chemicals and pathways, there has been a growing interest in the role of the infralimbic cortex. Apparently, infralimbic cortex, which is responsible for inhibiting emotional response by triggering self-control, plays a key role in cocaine addiction.
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By enabling a person to express and acquire an ongoing habitual behavior, infralimbic cortex can exacerbate addiction. The neurobiological evidences suggest that loss of such behavioral flexibility is witnessed in the case of addiction. Besides initiating cocaine-seeking behavior, infralimbic cortex enables the inhibition of drug-seeking behavior by extinction learning.
Cocaine is a notorious stimulant that produces a high, known as cocaine intoxication. The desire to experience this high is the primary reason why most people start using cocaine. Drug peddlers often mix cocaine powder with cornstarch, talcum powder, flour or amphetamines to maximize profits. According to the results of 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), about 1.9 million individuals aged 12 or older were the current users of cocaine. Of them, about 394,000 were the current users of crack cocaine. Similarly, about 896,000 individuals age 12 or older had a cocaine use disorder in the past year.
Compared to other drugs, cocaine can induce both short- and long-term psychological changes that affect the way the users think and experience emotions. This occurs as a result of cocaine's interaction with the brain and the nervous system. Although cocaine use generates euphoric effects as witnessed in the case of other drugs, this experience differs invariably from person to person.
Considering the level of repercussions of cocaine intoxication, it becomes more important to understand the ways to alleviate this problem. A research published in the Journal of Neuroscience demonstrated that the activity in the infralimbic cortex of lab rats inhibited cocaine-seeking behaviors. These findings have widened the scope of treating addictive behaviors in the future.
Diminishing cravings by muting neurons in infralimbic cortex
The infralimbic cortex is located in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain region responsible for inhibition of emotional responses and self-control. The researchers from the University of Iowa (UI) sought to find out more about the unique relationship between this subregion of the brain and cocaine-seeking behaviors. The team led by Andrea Gutman, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences of the UI, assessed the possibilities of manipulating the functions of the infralimbic cortex to regulate impulsive behaviors.
The study entailed two groups of rats as control and experimental that were administered cocaine using a lever. The access of the lever was available for two hours per day for two weeks. After two weeks, the rats in the control group were not provided cocaine. Over the course of another two weeks, the rats became accustomed to the fact that there was no cocaine reward and completely stopped pressing the lever at the end of this period. They had learned to restrain their cravings.
The experimental group of rats not only went through the same routine, but also the additional activity wherein the researchers deactivated the infralimbic cortex of the rats for 20 seconds for each time they pressed the lever. This was done by muting the infralimbic cortex with the gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) agonist. As a result, they did not learn to restrain their cravings and continued to press the lever till the end of the two-week phase despite not receiving the cocaine reward.
The researchers found the following correlations:
"While our experiments involved cocaine, we think the results could hold true for the infralimbic cortex's role in conditioning withdrawal and relapse from other addictive substances, including opioids," said co-author Ryan LaLumiere, an assistant professor in UI's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. The findings suggest that medications designed to mute neurons in the infralimbic cortex at the time of the expected reward can hold the secrets of curbing addictive behaviors in the future.
Path to recovery
The repeated exposure to cocaine alters the brain's reward pathways that makes it dependent on the substance. Over time, stress circuits become more sensitive that leads to increased displeasure and negative mood when not on the drug, displaying the first symptoms of withdrawal and other health complications. Therefore, it is essential to learn the ways to identify the warning signs and share one's fears to an expert to avoid the worsening of his or her condition.
Cancer has been around as long as mankind, but only in the second half of the 20th century did the number of cancer cases explode. In just the past ten years or so, we have seen estimates go from one in four to about one in every two people in this country will get cancer.Specifically, current statistics show that about 41 percent, or nearly half, of all Americans will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime, and about 21 percent, one fifth, of the nation's population will die from it according to the National Cancer Institute's SEER Cancer Statistics Review. In 2009 alone, over 1.5 million new cases were diagnosed and while the cancer mortality rate has recently declined due to early detection and more sophisticated cancer treatments, by all estimations, the overall incidence of cancer will steadily increase. Cancer is now our nation's second largest killer, next to heart disease, and some indicators are pointing toward cancer as soon being America's number one chronic disease.Over the past two decades, the rates of some cancers rose significantly, including:Kidney, liver, thyroid, esophageal and testicular cancer, as well as melanoma in men.Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, melanoma and cancers of the thyroid, liver, and kidney in women.Childhood cancers overall, especially childhood leukemia and brain cancer.So why is it that our cancer rate is so high, especially in a society that is more health conscious than ever before? Because never before in our history have we been exposed to so many chemicals or combinations of chemicals. They are literally everywhere. We breathe, drink, and eat chemicals each and every day. And the worst part is that they are here to stay. Agriculture alone uses over 800 million pounds of chemicals in the form of pesticides and herbicides annually which contaminates the soil for years and ends up in our bodies. These chemicals also drain into rivers, lakes and ground aquifers when it rains.Government agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are responsible for monitoring and determining if the chemicals in our air, water and foods are safe for consumption and at what levels these chemicals become unsafe.For example, to estimate the health risk to humans from exposure to pesticides, the EPA evaluates tests done on https://chempharmacy.com/product-category/research-chemicals/ experimental animals, and on plant, human or animal cells growing in the laboratory and enters this information into a computer program specially developed to estimate health risks called the "Dietary Exposure Evaluation Model." The EPA establishes a reference dose (RfD) for each pesticide it approves for use. The RfD is the amount of a chemical that, if ingested over a lifetime, is not expected to cause any adverse health effects in any population subgroup.CHEMICALS COMBINED WITH CHEMICALS, A DEADLY RECIPEWhile these tests may or may not be accurate when it comes to the particular chemical being tested, there is no way of determining the health effects of that specific chemical when combined with the many other chemicals we take into our bodies daily.For example, what are the health effects of a long-term exposure to atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides/pesticides in the world, and calcium propionate, sodium nitrate, and disodium EDTA, three common food preservatives? Add the chemicals found in common household items such as cleaners, shampoos, deodorants, and even eye make-up and the example might be a combination of organophosphates, another widely used pesticide, the food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG), which is found in a huge variety of foods, and nitrobenzene, found in furniture and floor polishes and has already been linked to cancer and birth defects.What are the effects to our health after 60, 50, 40, or even just 30 years of continuous ingestion and exposure of these combinations of chemicals and the many others just like them? The truth is that it is impossible for scientists to test the safety of the tens of thousands of different chemical combinations our bodies are exposed to in the world we live in today.EXPOSING THE TRUTH ABOUT TOXINSWith a skyrocketing cancer rate, to say that the carcinogens and other toxins in the food, water, and air that we ingest and breathe everyday poses no risk of cancer simply flies in the face of common sense and finally the truth has been formally exposed.In a landmark report issued in May, 2010, the President's Cancer Panel asserts that public health officials have "grossly underestimated" the likelihood that environmental contaminants trigger a large proportion of the cancers diagnosed in Americans annually. All total, we are exposed to approximately 80,000 chemicals in which roughly 20,000 of these chemicals are known cancer-causing agents and are largely unregulated. Every chemical and toxin in your body causes free radical damage and one of the main causes of cancer is excessive free radical damage to healthy cells causing a break-down of the immune system and injury to your DNA, resulting in some cells mutating into cancerous cells. With an overload of toxins and a malfunctioning immune system, the body is not capable of destroying the excessive number of cancerous cells that develop and sooner or later, some will survive and begin to multiply and the result is cancer.The panel's 240-page report is the first to place emphasis on environmental factors as being a serious cancer risk stating, "The American people – even before they are born – are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures" and advised President Obama "to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."For about the last three decades, federal agencies estimated that environmental pollutants caused only about 2 percent of all cancers and that occupational exposures may cause 4 percent. The panel called these estimates "woefully out of date" and criticized federal regulators for using them to set existing environmental standards and regulations and went on to blast the chemical industry for using them "to justify its claims that specific products pose little or no cancer risk."While environmental health scientists applauded the panel's report, saying it embraces everything that they have been saying for years, the report was not so well received by the American Cancer Society (ACS). Taking issue with the part about how environmentally induced cancers are "grossly underestimated", Dr. Michael J. Thun, the society's vice president emeritus of Epidemiology & Surveillance Research states, "Unfortunately, the perspective of the report is unbalanced by its implication that pollution is the major cause of cancer." According to Thun, the report does not give adequate attention to "the major known causes of cancer," including tobacco, obesity, sunlight and alcohol.However Richard Clapp, a professor of environmental health at Boston University's School of Public Health and one of the nation's leading cancer epidemiologists, is in agreement with the panel's findings. "Environmental and occupational exposures contribute to tens of thousands of cancer cases a year," Clapp said. "If we had any calamity that produced tens of thousands of deaths or serious diseases, that is a national emergency in my view. Some types of cancers are increasing rapidly including thyroid, kidney and liver cancers. Others, including lung and breast cancer, have declined, largely due to declines in tobacco use and hormone replacement therapy."Previous reports by the President's Cancer Panel have focused largely on treatment and more well-known causes of cancer such as diet or smoking but, "with the growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the unacceptable burden of cancer resulting from environmental and occupational exposures," says the panel.Environmental health scientists said they hope the report raises not just the President's awareness of environmental threats, but the public's, since most people are unaware of the dangers. The Panel's Report is available at pcp.cancer.gov.For more information visit
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