With the expanding knowledge of the neuronal circuits responsible for the behavioral disorders associated with addiction, though, DBS could become a future treatment option for patients suffering from addiction. In people addicted to psychoactive substance it has been shown by Positron emission tomography studies that, when they take the psychoactive substance, dopamine is released in the nucleus accumbens, which causes “the high.” They lack the decrease of the output neurons on this dopamine release. There is no brake on the "high" elicited by the drug and the subsequent dopamine release. This lack of inhibition causes activation of the reward system. The .....read more »

Drug use does not appear to be related to drug policy, as countries with more stringent policies (e.g., the US) did not have lower levels of illegal drug use than countries with more liberal policies (e.g., The Netherlands).This is the conclusion in a recent publication in PLoS Medicine: Toward a Global View of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Cocaine Use: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys.The researchers set out to collect basic patterns of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and cocaine use in different countries. They documented lifetime use of these substances in each county, focusing on young adults. They also .....read more »

Problematic Internet Use (PIU) of male students is higher than that of female students. On the Problematic Internet Usage Scale (PIUS) male students scores are higher compared to female students on all subscales such as negative consequences of Internet (NCI; 17 items), social benefit/social comfort (SB/SC; 10 items), except on excessive use(EU; 6 items). The students with psychological symptoms demonstrate more PIU.The students using the Internet from mostly their homes may feel more also have higher PIU scoresThose students that use the Internet mostly at night also score higher on the PIU.Using the Internet for social interactions is a risk .....read more »

The next three weeks Dr Shock is on vacation. This blog has been updated daily for more then a year. Since blogging is fun I will probably keep on blogging during these three weeks but maybe not daily and the long posts your used to. No cold turkey to prevent withdrawal symptoms from blog addiction or is it Internet addiction? Won't need shocktherapy for this I hope. But blogging is good for your health, at Living the Scientific LifeBy the way there another stupid thing people believe you can get addicted to. Here is a good one: internet dating. Thanks .....read more »

Yes Dr Shock is preparing for his yearly holiday, should he keep on blogging or just go "cold turkey"? Can he cope with his blog addiction? What do you think let me know in the comments.As some of you will know I took part in Adbusters’ Mental Detox Week last week. This meant I stopped doing screen and computer based stuff as much as possible. I was at work so there were obviously times when I had to check email and things. But I did manage to cut it right down to a bare minimum. Outside of work it was .....read more »

The quality of information on cocaine addiction on the web is generally poor, confirming previous studies on other health issues. Furthermore, universities seem to be poorly active in proposing websites (8.2%), while commercial organizations hold 55.7% of the studied websites.This seems a little of topic but for depression the quality of websites for information about depression and it's treatment is also poor. Wouldn't it be nice to have a quality scale for health websites? The authors used quality indicators. They looked at: quality of content, design and aesthetics of the site, readability, dating of information, authority of source, ease of .....read more »

The American Medical Association’s is thinking about recommending the inclusion of “Internet/video game addiction” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a.k.a. DSM), the standard-setting catalog of mental illness.According to an article in the Wall street journal online.Luckily the final decision will be up to the American Psychiatric Association, which oversees the DSM. To my opinion a lot of research has to be done to proof it even exists. Is there proof of withdrawal symptoms?You might have guest this author plays a lot of games, on and offline.Maybe we shlould make a poll which games are played .....read more »