Why cocaine addicts keep making bad decisions [LATimes.com]

Samantha Sangenito 2/5/154:00 AM

Chronic cocaine use alters brain circuits that help us learn from mistakes, a new study suggests.

The study, published online Tuesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, could offer a biological marker for the cycle of destructive decisions that many addicts exhibit.

Researchers measured EEG signals from a region of the midbrain that has been associated with how the brain manages errors in reward prediction. Neurons there release and absorb more dopamine when things go better than expected and less when events fail to meet expectations, and remain unperturbed when outcomes match predictions.

[For more of this story, written by Geoffrey Mohan, go to http://www.latimes.com/science...-20150203-story.html]

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