Wide Awake….
Drug addiction exacts a variety of ill effects on a user’s health. Among other things, drug addicts often experience disrupted sleep. The mechanism behind how the substances may change a user’s circadian rhythms remains unknown but new research on mice is providing some insight. Sleep is extremely important and our R.E.M. cycles are important, circadian rhythm genes help to regulate the brain’s reward system and could influence the addictive properties of drugs such as cocaine. Circadian gene deficient animals exhibited increased activity in the dopamine neurotransmitter system in the brain, which is heavily stimulated by cocaine use. The next step is to ascertain the affects of this gene in humans and perhaps find a link between those with low levels and the connection to habitual drug use.
Wide Awake
For example, in one study, human patients addicted to cocaine took much longer to fall asleep. Also, EEG measures of their brain activity showed that they experienced much less deep sleep than did people who did not use the drug. When the subjects were sleep deprived, their immune system had a reduced ability to fight infection. In another study, heroin patients with less than one year of methadone treatment had poor sleep, the possible cause of which could be measured at the molecular level, Gordon says. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging of these patients showed some energy-indicating molecules in their brain had failed to recover properly after sleep deprivation. Scientists also have determined that cognitive deficits characteristic of people who regularly use the street drug ecstasy may be based on drug-induced changes in sleep neurobiology. Their altered sleep patterns, cognitive deficits, and impulsivity may be worsened by high levels of catecholamines, brain chemicals that the body produces in response to stress.
Although the neurobiology underlying the sleep disturbance can be directly related to the disease process itself, it is often impossible to determine cause and effect. Therefore, it is important to study both sleep and the disease simultaneously to get a full understanding. Researchers also are trying to identify the neurobiological factors that help explain a recovering addict’s vulnerability to relapse.
“Drug addiction is characterized by compulsive drug taking, which occurs even though addicts understand that the behavior is harmful to them. It is also a chronic disorder. Addicts find it extremely difficult to suppress drug taking and often relapse, even after years of abstinence,” says Laura Peoples, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
The compulsive nature of the behavior and the ever present vulnerability to relapse suggests that drug addiction is accompanied by long-lasting changes in those parts of the brain that control motivation and behavioral choice. Recent findings have led to a new hypothesis, that experience- and activity-dependent adaptations cause a progressive and persistent increase in the response of specific neurons to specific signals that promote drug-seeking relative to the signals that facilitate other motivated behaviors.
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