New work on the brain and addiction.

Abstract

The brain has become an important part of how we understand ourselves as human beings. Almost everything is nowadays explained by references to the mechanisms of the brain: consumption behaviour, political activity, career choice and marital status. In fact, it is difficult to come up with a single social phenomenon that has not yet been connected to the brain. It is a central and exciting part of the human biopsychosocial essence. This also applies to addiction. In the field of addiction studies, the neurosciences have been provided enormous space in the form of expectations and financial grants. According to the so-called brain disease model of addiction (BDMA), addiction is a chronic brain disease and it is thought that in the future it will be possible to medicate or manipulate the disease with various concrete tools. The evidence seems to be unequivocal: imaging of brains has shown how “kicks” of dopamine and serotonin light up in people who are addicted to alcohol or gambling even when only thinking about drinking or playing, not even engaging in the behaviour. In recent years, however, a rapidly growing group of scientific authorities – including several well-known neuroscientists – have pointed out how weak and relative the evidence for brain research really is. They believe that neither the brain nor addiction problems are as easily programmed as the BDMA suggests. The same activity in the brain has shown to take place in other contexts: in everyday situations such as when we watch sports competitions or exciting movies, or when we feel great nervousness and it then releases. Because of brain plasticity, it is almost impossible to diagnose a person’s bad habits solely on the basis of brain imaging. Does the image of the brain from last year still represent the brain as it looks today? How do you “tie” the appearance of the brain to the person and their life situation? Here, psychology has become the helper of the brain disease model in that it provides the neurosciences with concepts and phenomena to search for in the chemical processes of the brain.