Brain Functions: Understanding and Implications for Addiction

This essay provides an overview of brain functions and their significance, particularly in the context of addiction research. It highlights the core functions of the brain, including their role as receptors, neurons, and in controlling various bodily activities like motor skills, thought, memory, and emotion. The essay also delves into the central nervous system, comprising the brain and spinal cord, and methods for analyzing brain function such as encephalograms and magnetic resonance imaging. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of understanding brain function in addiction research, particularly concerning how neurons and sensory moments instigate brain activity, leading to cravings and stimulation of the brain's reward system. The mesolimbic dopamine pathways and their role in addiction are also discussed, with references to various studies and research papers.

BRAIN FUNCTIONS

Table of Contents
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.....................................................................................................1
How has the information described in this unit changed your understanding of brain function?
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Why do you think that is it important for addiction research?...............................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................2

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
How has the information described in this unit changed your understanding of brain function?
The unit usually help to represent the core function of brain that they are used to show their
mechanism in the different part of body (Almosawi and et. al., 2018). With this, the core
understanding of the brain function is not limited means they have potential to control the overall
activity of body rather they are receptor, neuron, axon, dendrite, motor skills and many more
which is associated with function of brain (Yoon, Ming, and Song, 2018). whereas, it is also
identified that they have complex function usually they used to control thought, memory,
emotion, touch and many more function which is based on intrinsic level. The brain and spinal
cord that extend from it that make the central nervous system. Moreover, there function is
usually analysed with the different method with the help of encephalogram, magnetic resonance
imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography (Bočková
and Rektor, 2019).
Why do you think that is it important for addiction research?
While taking the context of addiction research, the study of brain function is useful to understand
the mechanism that show the neuron or sensory moment that instigate the function of brain. The
brain usually shows the craves the rewards of the substance. It is also show the intense
stimulation of the brain rewards system (Papadimitriou and et. al., 2020). In this, there are
number of used who show their persistent behaviour of the substance. It can lead to host of
euphoric feeling and strange traits. Moreover, addiction centre around the brain mesolimbic
dopamine pathways which also called as rewards circuits that begin in the ventral tegmental area
which is above the brain stem. In addition, the cell bodies of dopamine neurons arise in the VTA
and their axons extend to the nucleus accumbens (Raffaele, Lombardi, Verderio and Fumagalli,
2020).
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Almosawi and et. al., 2018. Acute administration of caffeine: The effect on motor coordination,
higher brain cognitive functions, and the social behavior of BLC57 mice. Behavioral
Sciences, 8(8), p.65.
Bočková, M. and Rektor, I., 2019. Impairment of brain functions in Parkinson’s disease reflected
by alterations in neural connectivity in EEG studies: A viewpoint. Clinical
Neurophysiology, 130(2), pp.239-247.
Papadimitriou and et. al., 2020. Brain computation by assemblies of neurons. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 117(25), pp.14464-14472.
Raffaele, S., Lombardi, M., Verderio, C. and Fumagalli, M., 2020. TNF production and release
from microglia via extracellular vesicles: impact on brain functions. Cells, 9(10), p.2145.
Yoon, K.J., Ming, G.L. and Song, H., 2018. Epitranscriptomes in the adult mammalian brain:
dynamic changes regulate behavior. Neuron, 99(2), pp.243-245.
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