For the first time humans see the impact of drugs on the brain

Scientists in the United States have successfully recorded the moment when blood flow to the brain circulates more slowly due to the effects of cocaine.

Yingtian Pan, a professor at Stony Brook University's Department of Biomedical Engineering in the US, and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health, use laser technology to monitor the effects of cocaine on blood flow. on the brain of the mouse, Daily Mail reported. They shone lasers on red blood cells in the brain so that the laser beam bounced back. By measuring changes in the frequency of bouncing laser beams, the team was able to calculate the speed of blood movement.

In the left picture, viewers see rat blood vessels when cocaine has not yet entered their bodies.But in the right picture, blood vessels become darker after cocaine enters the rat body.The greater the degree of darkening, the slower the blood moves.(Photo: Daily Mail)

The results showed that the blood flow rate in the brain decreased markedly after 30 days from the time cocaine invaded the rat body.

This is the first time scientists have visual evidence of the effects of cocaine on blood movement. This breakthrough can help doctors and researchers better understand the harmful effects of drug abuse on the brain, so that they will perform better brain tumor surgeries as well as treat addicts. drug.

Cocaine and other types of drugs can cause aneurysms and strokes, but the specific effects of cocaine on blood vessels are still a mystery.

"It is a mystery because researchers cannot see the effects on image data clearly , " Pan explained.

Thanks to the new technique, Pan and colleagues can track changes in blood vessels inside the rat brain after they take cocaine into their bodies. They can even determine exactly when the blood flow stops moving - a phenomenon that occurs before a stroke.