REPLY TO THE DISCUSSION.250 WORDS
In an article and study by UPI Arabia, they had scans that show how cocaine affects the brain, mainly the area of appropriate decision making and controlling behavior, the frontal lobe (UPI Urabia 2000). Most people take cocaine to feel different, feel free, and be more confident, but they don’t realize the major effects it has on their brain over a period of time. Whether cocaine be smoked, snorted, or injected, it enters the bloodstream and go into the brain. The immediate effect it has is caused by the build-up of the neurochemical dopamine. Dopamine is what is keeping our cells working at a normal level of activity to accomplish our needs. When we work harder or faster, our dopamine works harder to meet the level of activity we are at.
With cocaine, dopamine molecules build up and overactivated the receiving cells. Cocaine also inhibits norepinephrine and serotonin.
In an article by Eric Nestler, he says, “The nucleus accumbens (NAc), seems to be the most important site of the cocaine high (Nestler 2005). When the NAc gets stimulated by dopamine, it produces those feelings of satisfaction and pleasure. This is the reason behind the addiction, as after our cells receive this amazing response that make us feel good, we want to immediately repeat the activity that made us feel that same pleasure. A fact in the same article mentions that some laboratory animals would rather take cocaine, ignore food and starve (Nestler 2005). It really is crazy how cocaine affects our brain and how some rely on it to replace those other feelings.
Our limbic system, which is where our memory system is located, in the hippocampus and amygdala, is where we remember those pleasures, like I mentioned above. For example, if you do cocaine at a downtown bar and then later return to that same bar, your memory will bring up the time you got high at that bar and you will want to experience that same high, ergo repeating the cocaine use.
The frontal cortex is another part of the brain that is affected majorly by using cocaine. It is where we consolidate information and where decision making is decided. Our frontal cortex acts as a brake, like when we decide to stop doing something that will have a negative consequence. When using cocaine, this becomes foggy and our decision making becomes blurred. It’s almost like cocaine is cutting your brakes in the frontal cortex, you no longer have those brakes to stop you from making bad decisions.
