Neural Processing, Risky Behaviour and Cocaine Use

According to new research published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuro-science and Neuroimaging, compared to people without a drug problem, cocaine addicts tend to make riskier choices after losing out on a potential reward.

This heightened sensitivity to loss shown by the cocaine user, the study goes on to claim, correlates with an amplified decrease in a part of the brain which processes rewards. Altered brain processing of risk and reward compels cocaine addicts to make further risky decisions to regain a lost reward.

This evidence could help researchers understand why cocaine users make risky choices regardless of potential negative outcomes. The "paradoxical relationship between how someone acts in response to a loss can give us clues for how to develop better interventions and how to track the recovery of the brain from cocaine addiction," author of the study, Joshua Gowin, notes.

Click here to read the full article in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.