The Impact of Opium Misuse and Addiction on Cognitive Abilities
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The Impact of Opium Misuse and Addiction on Cognitive Abilities
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The Impact of Opium Misuse and Addiction on Cognitive Abilities
The opium crisis is a serious public health problem in the United States. In 2017, over 12 million Americans were reported to have misused opioids, and 47,000 succumbed to opioid overdose (Jalali, Botticelli, Hwang, Koh, & McHugh, 2020). Due to the increased overuse and death-related cases of opioids, the opioid problem has been declared a national epidemic (HHS, 2020). Solutions to the crisis require extensive consultation and collaboration among numerous stakeholders. However, such solutions are far less effective if they are not underpinned by precise and focused information supporting the mitigation, prevention, and treatment of opioids. One way of addressing these measures is understanding how opioids affect the brain, including its cognitive functions. The brain regions and neurological mechanisms that drive addiction are similar to those that support cognitive abilities like learning.
Introduction to Opium
Opium is among the Schedule II narcotics according to the classification by the Title 21 Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) §§1308.11 through 1308.15 (ECFR, 2021). Along with drugs like cocaine, morphine, codeine, amphetamine, and amobarbital, opium (through opioids) has a high potential for misuse and addiction, leading to severe physical and psychological dependence. As Schedule II narcotics, these drugs have been approved to be used for medicinal purposes through prescriptions. Opioids entered the American market as prescription medications capable of treating moderate-to-severe pain (Bonnie, Schumacher, Clark, & Kesselheim, 2019) following surgery or for chronic pain caused by diseases like cancer (Dalal & Bruera, 2019). As a result, an increase in prescriptions led to severe abuse and overuse by thousands of Americans due to acute psychological and physical dependence.
A robust way of understanding the opioid problem is first to investigate how it reacts once introduced into the body. Both animals and humans have opiate receptors in the brain (Jalali, Botticelli, Hwang, Koh, & McHugh, 2020). Different types of opiates, like morphine and heroin, interact with receptors creating action sites. Once they bind on specific receptors, opiates and opioids act by mimicking the outcomes of naturally produced pain-relieving chemicals. They bind on the opiate receptors in the brain and other locations within the body, blocking pain perception. In the short term, they cause a feeling of well-being, resulting in confusion, drowsiness, and confusion (Gravitz, 2019). They lead to physical (Volkow & McLellan, 2016) and psychosocial (Cheatle, 2014) dependence in the long term. As a depressant, and since the brain is connected to the central nervous system, opium slows down messages traveling between the brain and body. In essence, it has an impact on the brain’s cognitive abilities.
Cognitive Abilities (Parts of the Brain)
Cognition refers to the ability to capture, store, retrieve, and apply information. Cognitive abilities determine how a person perceives, thinks, and understands the environment through the interaction of learned and cognitive factors. In children, cognitive development is part of brain development, which involves reasoning, intelligence, information processing, and memory. The impact of opioids and opiates on the brain and the CNS is a non-formative way of modifying the neural systems that underpin cognitive abilities (Cheatle, 2014). Since opium can affect the central nervous system, it is vital to determine whether the impact is connected to the specific parts of the brain that support the cognitive abilities of learning and memory.
The hippocampus is a curved seahorse-shaped brain organ on each of the temporal lobes (Herbet & Duffau, 2020). It is part of a larger structure of the brain known as a hippocampal formation. This part of the brain supports cognitive abilities like navigation, perception of space, learning, and memory. The hippocampus is central to the implications of short-term and long-term memory. While short-term memory takes place in the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, the information must make a stop in the hippocampus. According to a recent study (Wein, 2014) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a small number of neurons within the hippocampus hold short-term memory. Therefore, any form of interference with the hippocampus may interrupt short-term memory functions.
Another crucial part of the brain in terms of cognitive abilities is the amygdala. The amygdala is a small almond-shaped structure located under each half of the human brain. As part of the limbic system, the amygdala is responsible for regulating emotions and memory (Herbet & Duffau, 2020). More importantly, the amygdala is associated with the brain's reward system, a critical system that initiates and sustains addiction to substance abuse. Lastly, another critical part of the brain is the pituitary gland, a pea-sized structure located deep in the brain behind the nose's bridge. The structure regulates the flow of hormones. The regulation of the release of pituitary hormones is made by dopamine, a key associate of opioids.
Impact of Opium on the Hippocampus, Amygdala, and Pituitary Glands
Recent studies have shown that new neurons can be generated in the adult mammalian brain. For instance, Bergmann, Spalding, and Frisen (2015) established that there is substantial hippocampus neurogenesis in adult humans. Neurogenesis is associated with better memory and increased cognitive function (Toda, Parylak, Linker, & Gage, 20...