Wirings And Rewirings

     Sometimes, a colloquialism will take us somewhere we need to go.

     People speak loosely of being “wired.” Most commonly, the term refers to a kind of addiction made manifest in observable behavior. I have no idea whether the origin of the term has any connection to the adaptive physiology of the brain, but that’s where my focus lies this morning.

     While addiction often correlates with an effect on the body, addiction itself is a phenomenon of the brain. This has been determined conclusively in the case of cocaine addictions. That particular drug makes detectable changes in neuronic connections, more swiftly than any other addictive drug. According to a psychologist friend, without those connections, cocaine’s addictive effect would be weaker and less enduring.

     All by itself, that raises an interesting question which, for practical reasons, must remain unanswered for now: Is every human brain susceptible to being rewired by the use of cocaine?

     It’s a pity we cannot answer that question with any confidence. If we were to learn that there are brains that cocaine cannot rewire, it would tell us something vital: it would give evidentiary support to the loosely described notion of the addictive personality. That what’s actually addicted is the brain rather than the personality is beside the point.

     To produce addiction in the user, a stimulus:

• Must provide positive feedback: i.e., either a gratifying sensation or the reduction of pain;
• Must do so promptly, to trigger the kind of learning we call conditioning;
• Must do so persistently over repeated uses.

     Those characteristics are found in all the commonly known addictions:

• The opiate drugs;
• The stimulant drugs;
• Alcoholic beverages;
• Nicotine;
• Chocolate;
• Caffeine.
• Sugary foods;
• Video games;
• Social media.

     Of course, sufficient overexposure to any of those things will cause the intensity of the positive-feedback effect to dwindle, in some cases to zero. But if the effect lasts long enough to condition the user, he’ll remain addicted. Repeated uses will rewire him in a fashion that will oppose any effort he makes to break the addiction.

     How many uses? For how long? And how strong and prompt must the positive feedback be? Those are research questions whose answers will always remain somewhat fuzzy. Aspirin is not addictive, for example, as is morphine. But how much one would have to weaken or slow morphine’s powers to prevent the rewiring is difficult to determine. Not everyone who uses it gets addicted to codeine.

     There are other aspects of addiction that are worth studying. I have two in mind as I write:

• Is susceptibility to addiction tied to age?
• Which is more likely to rewire the user: discrete exposures over a long period, or continuous exposure over a short period?

     I have no doubt that researchers are studying both, despite the difficulties. My intuition says that age is an important factor, possibly a dominant one. The susceptibility of kids and teens to social-media addiction is striking. Adults seem much less susceptible, though there are some exceptions.

     However, there’s a third question which may remain unanswered forever:

     We know that some addictions can be broken. While the aversive effects to “going cold turkey” to break heroin addiction are considerable, it has been done by many former heroin addicts. Addiction to nicotine appears at least as difficult to break. While we cannot be perfectly confident, we can theorize, at least, that the rewiring of the brain back to its pre-addicted state is a slower process than that which cemented the addiction. Moreover, it might be incomplete; as regards both the opiates and nicotine, recidivism is commonplace.

     Neurophysiological experiments of other kinds suggest that rewiring will remain possible. For example, the “inverting-lenses” experiment tells us that the brain will rewire to interpret inverted images correctly, but then will rewire to interpret “right side up” images once the lenses are removed. But those experiments are of a kind distant from the experience of an addictive stimulus. They lack positive feedback. We can’t feed heroin to experimental subjects to see how many times they can successfully kick the habit; it would cause talk.

     Still, the point here “should” be “obvious:”

     And with it, a great host of our social and political problems. Which compels a fresh invocation of Porretto’s Carbohydrate Maxim:

     More anon.