Scientists Use Neuroimaging Techniques

to Study the Effects of Cocaine on the Brain

Article available here.

Researchers from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Stony Brook University have developed an imaging tomography technique that illustrates the effect of cocaine abuse on the blood flow in the brain, particularly at the microvascular level. Tomography uses 2-dimensional imaging on varying planes in a 3-dimensional space to render incredible high-resolution models in virtual 3-dimensional space. This technique showed significantly decreased blood flow at all vascular thicknesses in the brain, which implies that this research could go far in helping understand and treat stroke related to and unrelated to cocaine abuse.

The researchers saw up to 30% reduction in cerebral blood flow (CBR) for rats who were administered proportional doses of cocaine. Though recovery and restoration of blood flow to the brain was present, it decreased with continued drug "abuse." The so-called microischemia is a significant threat to the delivery of oxygen to the cerebral tissue, and can lead to full-scale ischemia and neuronal death.

I think the most interesting thing about this article is its implication that there are those in the scientific community who aspire to help those who actively put themselves in life-threatening health conditions, albeit probable that the scientific community as a whole may just embrace the unique challenges on the microvascular level associated with the cocaine-related brain damage.