Cocaine and the Teen Brain
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The human brain continues to grow during the teen years, well into the twenties. It’s a scientific fact that abusing drugs and alcohol while your brain is still developing can change the brain’s structure and how it works—both in the short and long term.
Yale University scientists recently explored how some of these changes occur when the brain is exposed to the stimulant cocaine—and learned that some changes result from the brain trying to protect itself.
Your Brain’s Self-Defense
When exposed to cocaine for the first time, the teen brain tries to defend itself against the harmful drug by changing the shape of the brain cells (or neurons) and synapses. This defensive reaction is controlled by a certain pathway in the brain involving integrin beta1, a crucial gene in the development of the nervous system in humans and most animals. The scientists discovered that if they blocked the pathway—and prevented this cell-shape change—the mice became three times more sensitive to the effects of cocaine.
This research may explain why some people who use cocaine end up addicted to the drug while others escape its worst effects. Everyone’s genetic makeup is unique. It’s possible that those with strong integrin beta1 pathways are better able to avoid the dangerous effects of the drug. More research is needed to discover which genes can protect the brain from the effects of cocaine and other drugs.
Good News: Cocaine Use Is Down
The number of teens using cocaine has been steadily declining over the past decade. In fact, use among all age groups is down.
Teen Brain, a Work in Progress
Have you ever wondered why you have to be 16 to get your driver’s license or 18 to vote or 21 to legally drink alcohol?
It’s partly because your brain is not ready to take on these responsibilities, since your brain is not fully developed when you’re a teen.
During the teen years, essential parts of the brain are still forming—like the prefrontal cortex, which allows people to weigh the pros and cons of situations instead of acting on impulse. This is one reason why teens are generally more likely to take risks than adults.
For example, with alcohol, teens may be less able to judge when to stop drinking. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tells us that each year, more than 4,600 alcohol-related deaths occur among those less than 21 years old—that is way too many.
Research shows that alcohol and other drugs change the brain’s structure and how it works in the short and long term. In the short term, drugs affect your brain’s judgment and decision-making abilities, while long-term use causes brain changes that can set people up for addiction and other problems. The brains of people who become addicted get altered so that drugs are now their top priority—and they will compulsively seek and use drugs even though doing so brings devastating consequences for their lives and for those who care about them.
Do yourself a favor and use your brain to make smart choices, reach your goals, and achieve your full potential in life.
Real Teens Ask: Got Alcohol on the Brain?
As many of you know, the brain is still well under way in the development process through the teen years into your 20’s. Your decisions today can affect the way your brain develops. Ever wondered how? “Warda” from Wantagh Middle School in New York asks:
How can alcohol affect the development of the brain?
The teen years are an important time for brain development. The thinking, memory, and feeling parts are all changing during this time, and alcohol can interfere with these important changes and actually shrink the thinking and memory parts.
Research shows that drinking lots of alcohol when you’re a teen can make an area of the brain called the frontal lobes smaller. The frontal lobes help us make decisions, think about things, and pay attention. Teens who drink a lot have problems in these areas. Alcohol also can shrink the hippocampus, the brain area that helps with learning and memory. For weeks and months after a teen stops drinking heavily, these parts of the brain still struggle to work correctly.
Drinking at a young age also makes alcoholism more likely later in life. So the decision to drink when you’re still a teen could have lots of negative effects on brain development over time. So be kind to your brain and think before you drink.
Science For Starters: A Conversation with Dr. Ruben Baler, Ph.D.
Ruben Baler, Ph.D., is not your typical neuroscientist. Baler has studied in his native country Argentina, the U.S., and Israel. He is fluent in three languages. His work at NIDA enables him to publish scientific papers and collaborate on presentations and speeches with NIDA’s Director, Nora D. Volkow, M.D. His true passion is teaching young people about the brain. He talks to college students at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and regularly interacts with high school students in and around the Washington, DC, area.
Dr. Baler talks in this podcast about the teen brain—how it develops fast, just like teens themselves. And how, sometimes, that growth keeps young people from using their best judgment when it comes to risky behaviors, such as experimenting with drugs and alcohol, driving too fast, or jumping headlong into relationships.
Dr. Baler: Hello, my name is Ruben Baler. I am [a scientist] with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA. It’s probably helpful to think of the brain as a computer, which in essence, it is. It’s a very complex computer. It’s made up of circuits that affect or mediate all sorts of different functions in the brain. You can think of the learning circuit, the memory circuit, the higher thinking (cognitive function) circuit. There are all sorts of networks in the brain that interact with each other and with the environment. They are the substrates (or key brain areas) where drugs of abuse have their effects. The main substrate in the brain that is impacted by drugs of abuse is called the circuit of reward. It is the area deep inside the brain that influences feelings of reward, feelings of pleasure. Drugs of abuse hijack the normal pathways of reward and lead the brain to think that the drug-induced experience is the highest possible goal from now on.
SBB: What makes the teenage brain so special?
Dr. Baler: One of the main reasons is that different parts of the brain develop at different rates. There are two main parts: one area, called the amygdala, governs our instincts, our gut feelings. That area develops early on and is already mature in a teenager. Then there is another area called the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that takes much longer to develop, to fully mature. The teen brain is different because the ability to make good decisions really depends on the balance between these two structures: the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, part of the limbic system that develops so early on.
So we can say that teenagers make decisions mostly based on this instinctual part of the brain, these gut feelings, because the prefrontal cortex has not yet reached [developed] the ability to fully exert control and keep tabs on the already-mature limbic system.
SBB: Do you think that by studying the brain and knowing how it’s linked to addiction and other high-risk behaviors, teens can learn to “tame” their brains?
Dr. Baler: Well, one school of thought says that by providing fact-based information to teenagers—like the fact that their brains are still developing and they may make decisions differently than adults—may urge them to stop and think, and make better decisions as a result.
There are big, big questions in neuroscience. For example: where is consciousness? Where does consciousness lie? We’d like to understand how this computer (the brain) leads to things like music, creativity, poetry—very complex products of this very complex machine.
Ruben Baler, Ph.D., Health Science Administrator, Office of Science Policy and Communications, NIDA. Photo by Robin Stevens Payes
*Note: In order to hear the podcast you will need to have a media player on your computer.
Word of the Day: Neuroscience
Your school probably has science classes like biology and chemistry and maybe even ecology, but does it offer a class specifically on neuroscience?
Neuroscience is a branch of biology that focuses on the body’s nervous system—which includes the spinal cord, nerves, neurons (nerve cells), and also the all-important brain.
Work in the neuroscience field is varied and exciting. Neuroscientists might study how messages travel from one area of the brain to the other, or they might focus on how the brain is involved in behavior and decision-making.
Still others might work to find causes of and cures for diseases and medical problems like stroke, Parkinson’s disease, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and addiction.
We at NIDA are really focused on neuroscience, considering that drug addiction is a brain disease. Without neuroscientists and the research they do, we wouldn’t know some pretty important things—like how the brain isn’t fully developed until a person is well into their 20s and how drugs like marijuana
affect the teen brain differently than an adult brain.
So much about the brain is still unknown, making neuroscience a particularly exciting field. If you want to help shed light on the mysteries of the brain, consider exploring neuroscience as a career. Read some advice NIDA scientists gave the SBB for teens interested in a future career in science.
Learn more about the brain from these NIDA resources:
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National Institute on Drug Abuse | National Institutes of Health | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
