Drug Addiction and the Neuropsychological Perspective: What are the Neuropsychological effects of long term Drug Abuse?
Submitted by: Louise Belisle
Submitted to: Ms. Xunan Quetzal
Lecture: Introduction to psychology
February 19th, 2016
University of Belize
Abstract
Drug addiction today is a major problem that is affecting so many individuals today all over the world. In the following research paper several points will be covered starting with the discussion and interpretation of the connection between neuropsychological functioning and chronic drug abuse, followed by the recovery chances, consequences and the factors that contribute to adverse effects and addiction. The key drugs discussed are alcohol, cannabis, inhalants, opiates, psycho-stimulants and ecstasy. It was discovered that all of the substances affected similar areas, for instance attention, learning, memory visuospatial activities and executive functioning. However, their research shows that the neuropsychological effects are reliant on many factors which include duration, frequency, dosage and type of drug. Thus, what are some of these effects? Herein, this paper focuses on the found evidence of addictive behaviors.
First of all a drug is a substance used as a medicine or narcotic. Nevertheless, the continued abuse of drugs can pose great effects on various parts of the body for example the liver, lungs and brain. The preceding paragraphs outline the studies have been done in other to understand the effects/complications are it relates to neuropsychological effects and personality traits and disorders that are acquired after chronic drug abuse compared to the short term usage. These drugs include alcohol, cannabis (example marijuana), inhalants (example metallic paints, gasoline etc.), opiates (example heroin, pain killers etc.), psycho-stimulants (such as cocaine, amphetamine and methamphetamine) and ecstasy in humans. Researchers systematically revised different sources which include books, articles, electronic database PubMed that have been published within the last twenty (20) years and field work. However, they have studied only the key points to determine the primary and most consistent findings across the board.
First we begin with alcohol, which is any of a series of volatile hydroxyl compounds that are made from hydrocarbons by distillation. One method used to identify the neuropsychological effects of alcohol was magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); it was used to view the relationship between chronic alcohol abusers and structural neural injury. It is said that, the most consistent findings of neuropsychological impairment in heavy and long-term drinkers are in the domains of attention, short-term memory, visuospatial abilities, postural stability and executive functions, cognitive performance and physical effects e.g. disruption to front temporal, front parietal and cerebellar brain system (Murat et al, 2007). Hence, this can lead to poor problems solving, poor judgments and poor decision making. For example instead of saying NO they would say YES which can be very perilous depending on the situation. In addition, autopsies propose that individuals who are alcoholics have smaller, lighter and more shrunken brain as compared to non-alcoholics (Murat et al, 2007). As it relates to the recovery, it is stated that these impairments can be reversed over a period of abstinence, for example two (2) years.
As it relates to cannabis neuroimaging studies it indicates that there is reduced performance on a variety of attention memory (includes verbal memory and working memory), and executive functions and task such as decision making. However, the performance is dependent on the duration of usage and dosage. Solowij showed that the ability to focus attention and filter out irrelevant information was progressively impaired with increasing years of cannabis use, while speed of information processing was impaired with increasing frequency of use whether it may be days per month (Murat et al, 2007). Hence, it alters blood and activates brain tissue density. On the other hand, one study conducted by Murat et al. using high-resolution MRI to examine a sample of long-term (10 years regular use) and very heavy cannabis users (5 to 7 joints per day over many years), found vigorous reductions of 12.0% in the hippocampus and 7.1% in the amygdala of users compared to healthy individual (Murat et al, 2007). Thus, we can see that the duration of usage and the dosages posed different is the determining factor of the effects to the amygdala and hippocampus that deals with your memory; so you will for example eventually not be able to access memories. Finally as it related to recovery chances; after abstinence the results are uncertain.