News / Health & Wellness
Stimulant Addiction & Memory Training
New findings show that the brain can be trained to value delayed gratification, helpful in treating those who seek instant stimulation from addictive substances.
Most of us have a reasonable ability to look into the future and see rewards and punishments that our behavior may bring. This prevents some from experimenting with drugs, drinking and driving, or even having that extra helping of dessert.
In adults addicted to stimulants, a phenomena known as “delay discounting” greatly decreases their ability to see those future consequences. But now a new study shows that neurocognitive training that targets working memory can significantly reduce "delay discounting" in adults addicted to stimulants like cocaine.
In a randomized trial, participants who received the training through use of memory exercises decreased their rates of future reward discounting by an average of 50 percent, while the rates were not significantly changed for those who received control training.
"This is the first study to demonstrate that memory training decreases delay discounting. The ability of the people in our experimental group to value the future improved," said lead study author Warren K. Bickel, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Substance Abuse at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute in Roanoke.
This is extremely exciting because it suggests that some of the neurocognitive deficits related to addiction maybe reversible. Researchers have found that addicts' minds are "filled with the imagination of the pleasure to follow" and not of the possibility of legal or medical damages when they choose whether or not to take a drug. This study provides evidence that this myopic view of immediate pleasure and delayed punishments is not a fixed feature of addictions.
While much more research will need to be conducted, this could lead to cognitive training becoming an important tool in ending the hijacking of imagination by drugs of abuse.
"We know that virtually every form of addiction demonstrates an inability to value the future, which affects numerous behaviors and can also predict how well people do in treatment," said Dr. Bickel.
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