Addiction & Recovery

I threw down a bit of a challenge last month at the Association of Medical Illustrators Conference in Minnesota. But first, I had to—somewhat unexpectedly—accept some challenges presented by others.

Monkeys trained to play fixed video games made moves indicating that they expected certain patterns to occur. Erika Beras reports
 

Of course, the media is writing a lot today about the link between mental illness and creativity in light of Robin Williams' suicide. Here's the thing: Williams' comedic genius was a result of many factors, including his compassion, playfulness, divergent thinking, imagination, intelligence, affective repertoire, and unique life experiences.

Prescription painkillers, antidepressants and other brain drugs have gender-specific effects

Philosophers have debated for years whether we deliberately make each of the many decisions we make every day, or if our brain does it for us, on autopilot.

Mice regularly exposed to UV light produced feel-good endorphins and behaved like addicts. If humans do, too, it could explain why we seek sun, despite damage. Dina Fine Maron reports

 

Compared with 50 years ago, today's heroin user is whiter, more suburban and had prescription opioids for a gateway. Dina Fine Maron reports
 

In 1995, Ivan Goldberg, a New York psychiatrist, published one of the first diagnostic tests for Internet Addiction Disorder. The criteria appeared on psycom.net, a psychiatry bulletin board, and began with an air of earnest authenticity: "A maladaptive pattern of Internet use, leading to clinically significant impairment or distress as manifested by three (or more) [...]

Would you rather have $50 now or $100 two weeks from now? Even though the $100 is obviously the better choice, many people will opt for the $50.

"We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has." - Milan Kundera Two weeks ago, I [...]

Researchers selectively erase drug-related associations in rats

After a new brain-scanning approach revealed that a seemingly vegetative young woman was actually conscious, she started down the road to a partial recovery