Being the nerd that I am, I'm a fan of the Dr Who series of which the link above gives 2 prequels to the annoyingly tense mid season happenings. Chris Nichols "oooooh weeeehooooooo wheeeehooooo wheeeeeohooooo oooooo"
5) Some research (on psychopharmacology)
I'll start with the behavioural studies, so basically the effects the drugs have on moods (which in turn may effect the subject's physical behaviour, but at the end of the day it's up to them to whether they hug or attack someone). Tried to bold the important parts.
Curran & Travill (1997)
- Studied 12 ecstasy and 12 alcohol users
- The MDMA users had a 'high' all weekend, then a low midweek.
Gerra et al. (2000)
- Found that novelty seeking was high sort after by MDMA users
Parrott, Siskm, & Turner (2000)
- Looked at 12 heavy MDMA users, 16 light users, and 22 non users.
- 12 heavy users - reported higher paranoia, psychoticism, anxiety, obsessionality, impulsiveness, and poor sleeping than the light and non users. (what did they expect?).
- But they had also used amphetamine (presume this means at least once, but now are solidly on the old MDMA) So the effects could be due to the amphetamine drug, rather than the MDMA... unknown.
Cognitive studies (effects on the old memoirs)
Parrot er al. (1998)
- Studied 10 regular users (>10 tabs [presume this means doses), 10 novice users (<10 tabs), and 10 control group subjects (probably non users).
- They found that the regular users had worse immediate and delayed recalls (short-term and long-term memorys)
- Also that there was no difference between all groups on choice, simple RT (gonna find out what it refers to), and vigilance tasks.
What types of cognition are impaired?
Parrott (2000)
- found that users tended to have reduced memory. (Scholey et al. [2001] suggested that it was 'every day memory')
Impaired:
- Executive
- Planning
- Impulsiveness
(related to the frontal cortex and the hippocampus)
Ooh fMRI scans (good pictures of the brain functioning)
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| An MRI (different setting allow the fMRI) |
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| This is actually an MRI the f= the function |
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| This is an fMRI - you can see which bits are in use |
Roberts, GMP et al. (2009)
- Looked at 20 MDMA, 20 control, and 14 cannabis subjects.
- The signature of colour on the brain showed up a lot stronger than cannabis users
- There were also abnormal activations in the frontal, left-temporal, and right-parietal regions of the brain.
Jager et al. (2008)
- 71 drug users (33 MDMA, 322 pills average)
- MDMA had no effect on working memory or attention, but reduced the associative memory performance.
- Associative memory - affected by amphetamine much much more than by ecstasy.
Cowan (2007)
- Saw a reduction in levels of 5-HTT, in ecstasy users who recently quit their habit.
- And that 5-HTT levels has normalised in those who had stopped for a long time.
- However he couldn't conclude a lot because many studies have used different methods making them hard to compare.
Problems with interpreting results
- There arn't really any random allocations of subjects.
- Subjects may use more than one drug at a time (polydrug use)
- For example: 70% of MDMA users interviewed drank dangerous amounts of alcohol (Winstok et al,, 2001)
- Other drugs are toxic - Amphetamines are more toxic with load music (mice) (Morton et al., 2001)
- The contribution of heat, dancing, and unclean drugs don't help
- The subject may already have pre-existing personality differences (individual difference).
Some interesting facts
Whereas horse riding there is 1 serious accident every 350(ish), there is only 1 serious effect from MDMA in every 10,000(ish) users.
MDMA is only one of many other drugs that are neurotoxins in animals. And may have the same effect in humans.
MDMA impairs cognition in animals and might do the same in humans. Can also effect the moods of humans.
Gonna end with a question after talking to Josi...
Q: Is taking ecstasy any worse than taking any other drug?
As students we often bindge on alcohol, and some on cigerettes. Who decides whether it is wrong to take MDMA? (besides the law obviously)
Next Post
either addiction or emotion
Something fun for your trouble
coming soon!
