EDUCATION
Chiang-Shan (Ray) Li, md, PhD Getting control over cocaine Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobiology MD – National Taiwan University PhD – California Institute of Technology YCCI Scholar If a restaurant you’ve long patronized serves you a badly cooked meal, you’re less likely to return. This kind of behavioral adjustment rests on an ability called cognitive control. People who abuse drugs often have poor cognitive control. “None of them will tell you that substance abuse is great,” says Chiang-Shan (Ray) Li. But despite lost jobs and fractured relationships, the signal to change is weak and makes quitting that much harder. Li tested his subjects’ cognitive control by asking them to press or stop pressing a button according to the signal
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YCCI: A Bridge Across Disciplines to Strengthen Clinical and Translational Research
displayed on a screen in front of them. Then he adjusted the signal timing to make the test more difficult. People with no history of drug use were better able to slow down to increase their accuracy than were former cocaine users. As a ycci Scholar, Li had access to functional magnetic resonance imaging (FmRI). This type of scan allowed him to see what parts of the subjects’ brains were actually at work. The prefrontal cortices of the two groups were responding differently, but there was a range of responses even among the former cocaine users. Li sees potential here to screen for poor cognitive control as people enter drug treatment and provide them with additional support when necessary. When Li administered Ritalin, the stimulant used to treat attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd), to former cocaine users, they performed better on the test. That finding suggests a therapy that could aid recovery under controlled conditions. Again, the subjects’ responses varied. Li is now seeking additional nih support to take his work a step further and see whether there is a genetic basis for the difference he’s seen in former cocaine users. Determining that a genetic basis does exist may lead to developing new drugs to help people remain in recovery.