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Brain Awareness Week, March 10-16, 2003
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is having a special symposium on Stress and the Brain : Developmental, Neurobiological, and Clinical Implications as part of Brain Awareness Week March 12, 2003 - Natcher Auditorium, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
 Many clinicians and addiction medicine specialists suggest that stress is the number one cause of relapse to drug abuse, including smoking. Research is providing a scientific basis for these clinical observations. In both people and animals, stress leads to an increase in the brain levels of a peptide known as corticotropin releasing factor (CRF). The increased CRF levels in turn triggers a cascade of biological responses. Animal and human research has implicated this cascade in the pathophysiology of both substance use disorders and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Some of the topics to be discussed include: Imaging the Addicted Brain, Gene-Environment Interactions, Communication Between the Brain and the Immune System, The Relationship Between Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Substance Abuse and much more.
NIDA
11:23:20 PM 
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