“Just last week, we actually scanned our first cocaine addict, who is someone who wants to quit but has not been able to. This has essentially ruined his life,” Eagleman says. He describes what happened:
We put him in the scanner … and we showed him pictures of cocaine. That activates the craving networks in his brain. We measured that on the fly, and we represented [the measurement] as a bar on the screen. His job is to make that bar go down. He’s getting visual representation of what’s happening inside his skull. It’s something you would not normally have conscious access to. … He was totally good at it. We said, “Now crave.” Bar goes up. “Now, do what you can to suppress your craving.” He got good at making the bar go down.
As an addict learns what thoughts make the cravings go down, Eagleman and LaConte hypothesize, he can build up his ability to resist, like working out a muscle. Eagleman calls it “the prefrontal gym.”
- More Here
We put him in the scanner … and we showed him pictures of cocaine. That activates the craving networks in his brain. We measured that on the fly, and we represented [the measurement] as a bar on the screen. His job is to make that bar go down. He’s getting visual representation of what’s happening inside his skull. It’s something you would not normally have conscious access to. … He was totally good at it. We said, “Now crave.” Bar goes up. “Now, do what you can to suppress your craving.” He got good at making the bar go down.
As an addict learns what thoughts make the cravings go down, Eagleman and LaConte hypothesize, he can build up his ability to resist, like working out a muscle. Eagleman calls it “the prefrontal gym.”
- More Here
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