So two factors to know about in stereotypy is one, there is a kind of strange sensitization that occurs. If somebody stays with the same amount of cocaine and starts to develop stereotypy they’ll get more and more and more of it even if they don’t increase their cocaine and that’s sensitization. Viagra Super Active new medication.
Another factor is reverse tolerance and that is somebody who has become dependent on cocaine and begun to show stereotypy might try to use less cocaine but they will have increasing stereotypy. They want to stay healthy. For instance, they might not use for awhile and go back to cocaine at much smaller levels than they last left it and they’ll have much more active stereotypy. So there is a reverse tolerance related to the sensitization.
Kindling you know from other lectures of the course is the ability to yield a seizure focus with progressive generalization of the seizure with what was originally a subthreshold incident whether it was electrical or chemical. Cocaine will produce kindling. That is, it will lead to seizures even at doses that don’t increase. Where is cocaine doing its damage? Actually cocaine acts at multiple sites and they don’t all explain reinforcement or addiction. The anesthesia peripheral effect does not explain addiction. The improvement in attention and wakefulness is happening in the reticular activating system. That is a norepinephrine effect but it’s not primarily responsible for addiction because as you know we’ve got other substances that produce enhanced attention that are not to any great extent addicting, for instance, Ritalin. Canadian viagra erectile dysfunction treatment.
So where else could they lie? Well, we know that cocaine can provoke alarm, anxiety and autonomic arousal throughout the body. That’s an adrenergic effect too and it’s through the locus caeruleus, the alarm center in the midbrain but that is not the region responsible for reinforcement. We have mentioned that the reinforcement center, the pleasure center is the nucleus accumbens and that is a dopaminergic mediated process, not purely, but I want to uncomplicate this so that we are immediately familiar with it when we see it on tests or in our work with patients and can explain it and some basic mechanisms. So nucleus accumbens, reinforcement pleasure center, dopaminergic process. Stereotypy and motor hyperactivity, that’s not part of the pleasure center. That’s happening in the nigra striatal region and it’s a limbic process. Also dopamine, not related to reinforcement. Cialis Jelly at canadian online pharmacy.
We’re now moving to the bottom of page 283 into the treatment and the treatment of such a powerful, deadly and widely available substance has to be vigorous. It’s not a strict conversational process so we use behavioral techniques. Here’s one that I had to use in one of my group members in the men’s cocaine group. He was in recovery, hadn’t used for a month. He had been threatened with losing his job. He came into the group. He was fidgeting. Fidgeting in a group is a sign that somebody either is using or is aching to use.
Aug 11
Recent Comments