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Asked by anon-228668 to Jolel, Emily, Amber, Alex on 11 Nov 2019.
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Jolel Miah answered on 11 Nov 2019:
The reward system of the brain is typically responsible for this, if there is over-stimulation of this area, it can lead to addiction. Prisoners normally get medication to help with this bit but they also require therapy. Social media is also showing how people can get addicted to likes and shares and this is becoming an addiction for some people. Changing the way the brain works. You can see in this behaviour some ‘Youtubers’, they feel on a ‘come down’ and feel low after experiencing many ‘highs’
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Emily Mattacola answered on 12 Nov 2019:
We’ve only recently begun to understand how our genes influence the brain’s susceptibility to addiction. The most likely culprits for this are the brain’s reward system, the part of our brain which reacts to threats (the amygdala), and the part of our brain which organises our responses to the environment (the prefrontal cortex).
All these brain regions are essential for survival. Our drives for food are governed by the reward system, for example, so they’re not bad parts of the brain. When we take addictive drugs though, the drugs stop the reward system from responding properly and, over time, can cause it to stop responding to everyday rewards like food or spending time with friends. This means that someone with an addiction will only experience that level of pleasure by taking the drug.
Addictive substances may also dampen the prefrontal cortex so that we can’t respond properly to information from our environment. We think this might be one of the reasons why people with addiction often deny that they have a problem.
The amygdala also stops responding properly to real-life threats, which is thought to be why people with addiction can struggle to stop even when they know what they are doing is bad for them.
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