This article has nothing to do with Ghana,
but is scientifically interesting.
The original article in Nature magazine can be found here :
www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12024.html
It describes ... read full comment
This article has nothing to do with Ghana,
but is scientifically interesting.
The original article in Nature magazine can be found here :
www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12024.html
It describes a study of behaviour of rats addicted to cocaine,
in which researchers noted decreased brain activity in some part of prefrontal brain lobes.
The prefrontal area is involved in personality expression and social behaviour, amongst others.
These researchers have found a way to stimulate this part of the brain (of the rats) from the outside,
and found that doing that causes a "significant" decrease in cocaine-seeking behaviour.
This is interesting research on rats,
but it is far too early to use this on humans, especially since there is not yet information about side-effects.
That a scientist would promote such an idea is therefore surprising,
so i have also looked for the NIH article which claims he said that,
and found it at :
www.nih.gov/news/health/apr2013/nida-03.htm
This is early-stage research,
which has not even been tried on monkeys,
and promoting it's immediate use on incarcerated humans
seems equally responsible as promoting electroshock or lobotomy.
A treatment based on this effect
would deliberately change the way a brain works,
and especially target a part of the brain that defines personality,
so for forced use on incarcerated persons it would be illegal,
while for consenting free people it would be criminally irresponsible because side-effects are not known.
This research may however, in the long run, increase understanding of addiction, and help addiction-prone people have happier lives.
Poor people would probably not have access to such help.
This article has nothing to do with Ghana,
but is scientifically interesting.
The original article in Nature magazine can be found here :
www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12024.html
It describes ...
read full comment