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UAMS Researcher Awarded $2.7 Million to Study Brain Activity of Addicts

2 min read

Warren K. Bickel, director of the Center for Addiction Research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, recently received his fourth concurrent grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.

For 25 years, Bickel has studied the intricate brain functions of individuals addicted to various substances, including cocaine, tobacco and alcohol. This grant provides Bickel and his team $2.7 million dollars over a five-year period with the goal to determine whether the effects of addiction on executive function can be reversed or rehabilitated. Executive function refers to the ability to value, plan and commit to future actions and goals.

About 2 percent of the NIH’s grant recipients ever receive four or more concurrent awards, according to a news release from UAMS.

"For a long time, we’ve recognized the importance of a specific area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which is the region responsible for handling the core elements of executive function," Bickel, a professor in UAMS’ College of Medicine and College of Public Health, said in a news release. "However, we have just come to learn that people with addictions do not use this brain region or executive function adequately. Our goal is to figure out how to increase the strength and utilization of executive function among such individuals."

All addicts value their particular addictive substance over virtually all other needs, whether it’s financial or emotional, Bickel said. To find out why they place such a strong emphasis on their addiction, Bickel and his research team plan to use neuro-cognitive techniques that have proven successful in treating others with difficulty using executive function, such as individuals with schizophrenia and traumatic brain injuries.

"Use of the prefrontal cortex of the brain changes over time, depending on how much we use it," Bickel, also a member of UAMS’ Psychiatric Research Institute and Department of Psychiatry, said. "Addicts make decisions that are more immediate, decisions that may not seem right to other people. We know that by not using that portion of the brain to its fullest extent, its capacity for use diminishes. We want to produce conditions that will require utilization of that portion of the brain in addicts."

The goal, said Bickel, who is collaborating on the project with David Redish of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Neuroscience, is to provide evidence of improved executive function in study participants, leading to new and innovative approaches into the research and treatment of addictions.

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