EFFECTS OF DRUG

The Effect of Drug Use on Brain



Table of Contents

Introduction1

Drug Use Affects the Brain1

Effects of Cocaine on Brain2

Effects of Marijuana on Brain3

Conclusion4

The Effect of Drug Use on Brain

Introduction

Drug use or abuse is one of major concerns prevailing in the American society. The increasing number of youths addicted to drug use is surely an alarming sign and the issue needs to be addressed properly. Although there are a number of drug intervention programs in place, but they have failed to produce any substantial results depicting any decrease in the drug using trends among the adolescents. This paper discusses the pros and cons of drug use on the human brain and the factors that have influenced them to take up drugs. The findings will provide an insight into the contemporary trends of drug use and its effects (Simpson, 2007).

Drug Use Affects the Brain

The human brain as well as being the most complex organ in the body and one of the most studied, which governs all activity of the individual to regulate basic body functions. The cerebral cortex is 100.000 billion neurons, with which every human being is born. These cells communicate with each other via synaptic connections in the first year trillions of connections are developed; this interface becomes more difficult when drugs (Stevens, 2006). A normal person loses about 10% of brain mass throughout their lives, but a person addicted to any substance increases the daily destruction (some researchers say as an example the case of alcoholics, who lose neurons 60.000 per day).

Drugs are chemicals that interfere with communication of the brain and affect the way nerve cells send and receive messages (electrical impulses). Brain areas that are most affected by drug use are the stem, which controls basic functions (breathing, sleep, heart rate), the limbic system, which contains the reward circuit (the ability to feel pleasure), and finally the cortex, which controls functions such as seeing, feeling, hearing and taste, as well as thoughts (Wallace, 2008).

Faced with an emotion, a person undergoes a change of external and internal bodily state. These changes are being continuously identified in the brain through nerve terminals. These circuits are started in the head, neck, trunk and limbs, crossing the spinal cord and medulla oblongata and thalamus, traveling to the hypothalamus, limbic structures and various somatosensory cortices (Vega, 2007).

In the latter cortices, receive information about what is happening in our body, gets "A panorama of the landscape" changing our body during an emotion. (This is an unending). Besides the "neural tour" of our emotional state back to the brain, our body also used a "chemical trip" parallel. Hormones and peptides released in the body for emotion can reach the brain via the bloodstream, and actively enter the brain through the blood-brain barrier call, or even more easily, through brain regions that lack such a barrier.

From here, you can think of as the reason that certain chemicals have played a prominent role in many cultures, and consider the drug problem facing our society today (legal ...