Effect of addiction on the brain

[theoristo]

Here 's a newer study about the role of prefrontal cortex and the midbrain dopamine system.
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/49/19900.abstract?sid=0cf22931-de4d-4007-b02a-68bc54c4285d

 

[theoristo]

if you can't read all the study just read the abstract.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Ok look, if "intelligene is not really understood" as you say, then how can we have a scientific discussion about it? But no wait, that depends on what you mean by understood. I bet there are a bunch of things we DO know about intelligence. Maybe if you focus on those and then try to see how addiction affects those things. And I think I'm right: whatever those things are, they will have a neurochemical component.

Yes of course there is a neurochemical component to intelligence but you can't examine it and link it directly to intelligence. The knowledge and technology just isn't there. It would be better to examine how people perform certain tasks like in the German paper on sexual images and working memory we discussed on the first page.