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Music heightens party drug
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| Orko |
| quote: | Music heightens party drug - Ecstasy effects may be exacerbated by disco din
Loud noise appears to fuel the effects of the club-drug ecstasy in the brain. The results add to the debate about the risks of long-term brain damage from the drug.
Ecstasy is the common name for 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). The drug, popular at raves and nightclubs, triggers a flood of the feel-good chemical serotonin in the brain, causing feelings of euphoria, energy and well-being.
Michelangelo Iannone at the Institute of Neurological Science in Catanzaro, Italy, and his colleagues tested whether loud noise intensified ecstasy's effects in rat brains.
After injecting the animals with either a low or high dose of MDMA, they played them a buzz of white noise at the maximum volume allowed in Italian nightclubs. They measured the rats' brain activity using electrodes inserted into the animals' skulls.
The deafening noise can transform a seemingly innocuous dose of the drug into a potent one, they found. The low dose of MDMA had little effect on the animals' brains - but when paired with the noise, it boosted the activity of certain brain cells. "This may make the difference between the drug being toxic and not," says Jenny Morton at the University of Cambridge, UK, who has studied the effects of music on drugs.
In addition, the researchers showed that a high dose of ecstasy combined with noise altered the animals' brain activity for five days. Animals that were drugged but remained in peace and quiet were back to normal after only a day, they report in BMC Neuroscience1.
Big hit
The results suggest that pounding techno music could heighten ecstasy's effects in the human brain - perhaps explaining the drug's popularity amongst club-goers. "You may get a stronger hit," says Andrew Parrott who studies recreational drugs at the University of Wales, Swansea.
The result adds to earlier studies suggesting that other features of a disco, such as heat and crowding, also heighten the effects of ecstasy in animals. These conditions, like music, might further rouse brain cells that are already over-stimulated.
The report echoes a 2001 study in mice by Morton, which showed that club music exacerbates the brain damage caused by the drug methamphetamine, known as speed. "If [Iannone's team] had used loud, pulsing noise, their effects would probably have been stronger," Morton says.
Lasting damage
Iannone's study fuels a dispute about whether MDMA takes a serious toll on its users' brains. The drug is sometimes argued to be relatively harmless; most of the clubbers who have died after taking it did so because of overheating or drinking too much water.
The bigger debate is whether the drug causes long-term brain damage. Studies in animals suggest that MDMA erodes nerve endings, raising concern that it may do the same to people, perhaps increasing their susceptibility to depression, mood problems or other conditions.
The long-term consequences of ecstasy use are difficult to prove, because its users often take other drugs or alcohol, and the effects of ecstasy can be hard to tease out from these other factors.
Because of this controversy, it is important to know that loud noise could ramp up the effects of MDMA, Morton says. "It would be tragic to find that taking ecstasy in clubs as a teenager significantly increased the risk of mental illness in later life," she says. |
Source, Journal Nature
Very interesting article. Who is up for some trials? :D |
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| geroin |
| i really want jay chinamon to read this |
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| SonjaDanceDance |
| This is so true music does heighten the drug. Not from personal experience because I don't need it, but I see it in my friends eyes. I have no idea where they go when its a really good song is playing. |
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| girllovingtvibe |
and on the other hand - lol
"PARTYGOERS who take the recreational drug ecstasy may face a greater risk of long-term brain damage if they bombard themselves with loud music all night long.
The warning follows experiments in rats that were simultaneously exposed to loud noise and MDMA, aka ecstasy. The noise both intensified and prolonged the effects of the drug on the animals' brains.
Michelangelo Iannone of Italy's Institute of Neurological Science in Catanzaro and his colleagues gave rats varying doses of MDMA while bombarding them with white noise for 3 hours at the maximum volume permitted in Italian nightclubs.
Those given the highest dose of ecstasy, equivalent to the average amount taken by a partygoer on a night out, experienced a slump in electrical power of the cerebral cortex for up to five days after the noise was switched off. Previous studies suggest that such loss of power is related to brain hyperactivity and can ultimately lead to depression.
Rats on high doses that were not exposed to noise, and those exposed to noise but given lower doses of MDMA, experienced equally large slumps in brain power, but these only lasted for about one day (BMC Neuroscience, DOI :10.1186/1471-2202-7-13).
Since the experiments were in rats, it is hard to work out what the results mean for humans, but they do suggest that we need to know more about how ecstasy users are affected by their environment. "The most important finding is that the effects of MDMA can be strengthened by common environmental factors, such as noise in discotheques," says Iannone.
His findings echo previous research by Jenny Morton of the University of Cambridge, who discovered that a combination of methamphetamine (or speed) and loud, pulsing music is much more damaging to mice than either stimulus alone (New Scientist, 3 November 2001, p 17). White noise had no effect on the mice in her experiments. "If Iannone's team had used loud, pulsing noise, their effects would probably have been even stronger," she says.
She agrees that more research into the combined effect of music and drugs on humans is needed. "It would be tragic to find that taking ecstasy in clubs as a teenager significantly increased the risk of mental illness in later life," she says.
Andy Parrott at the University of Wales in Swansea, UK, has carried out an analysis of the combined effects of ecstasy and environmental factors, which is expected to be published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in April. "From the long-term health perspective, dances and raves may well be the worst venues in which to take MDMA," he says. "Dancing, heat and noise may all boost the acute effects of MDMA, but these same factors will also exacerbate the long-term adverse effects."
source: http://www.newscientist.com/channel...925393.800.html |
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| Spin Laden |
| Not mentioned in the Italy Institute of Neurological Science study, these same rats became adept with glowsticks. And as much as these rats love cheese, they also developed a nack for mocking Tiesto. |
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