Brain Imaging in Substance Abuse

The last two decades have seen prodigious growth in the application of brain imaging methods to questions of substance abuse and addiction. Many more investigations of drug effects on the structure and function of the human brain were soon to follow, leading to much better insights into brain systems. With the growing availability and decreasing cost of brain imaging technologies, it has become possible for researchers, physicians, forensics experts, and legal professionals to study brain changes in humans associated with substance abuse. In Brain Imaging in Substance Abuse: Research, Clinical, and Forensic Applications, highly experienced clinical researchers from diverse fields describe the use of electroencephalography, emission tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging to study the neural effects of substance abuse. The authors detail the effects of drugs, including alcohol, benzodiazepines, marijuana, opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, hallucinogens, and solvents on brain electrical activity, metabolism, hemodynamics, receptor and neurotransmitter levels, neurochemistry, and structure. The striking findings they report emerge from more than 1350 articles in some 320 journals, and are organized by method, abused substance and drug use state. The book examines the most commonly used neuropsychological tests and highlights associations between neuroimaging findings and behavior. Comprehensive and readily accessible, Brain Imaging in Substance Abuse: Research, Clinical, and Forensic Applications offers psychiatrists, radiologists, neurologists, pharmacologists, physiologists, psychologists, substance abuse specialists, and legal professionals a broad yet thoroughly integrated understanding of the methods and results obtained with clinical neuroimaging studies of substance abuse today. Highly experienced clinical researchers from diverse fields describe in detail the use of electroencephalography, emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and neuropsychology to study the neural effects of substance abuse. They extensively review research findings these powerful methods have yielded. The authors detail the effects of drugs, including alcohol, benzodiazepines, marijuana, opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, hallucinogens, and solvents on brain electrical activity, metabolism, hemodynamics, receptor and neurotransmitter levels, neurochemistry, and structure. The striking findings they report emerge from more than 1350 articles in some 320 journals, and are organized by method, abused substance, and drug use state. Comprehensive and readily accessible, Brain Imaging in Substance Abuse: Research, Clinical, and Forensic Applications offers psychiatrists, radiologists, neurologists, pharmacologists, physiologists, substance abuse specialists, and legal professionals a broad yet thoroughly integrated understanding of the methods and results obtained with clinical neuroimaging studies of substance abuse today.