A research team from the Friedman Brain Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has published evidence which finds that subtle changes of inhibitory signaling in the reward pathway can change how animals respond to drugs such as cocaine.

The authors say this is the first study to demonstrate the critical links between the levels of the trafficking protein, the potassium channels' effect on neuronal activity and a mouse's response to cocaine.   

The authors investigated the role of sorting nexin 27 (SNX27), a PDZ-containing protein known to bind GIRK2c/GIRK3 channels, in regulating GIRK currents in dopamine (DA) neurons on the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in mice.

Many young people know not to drive while drunk but in the wave of health claims and legislative endorsements of marijuana, the message is being lost that you will still be impaired if you are high.

Male college students who report using marijuana in the month before they were surveyed had a high prevalence of driving under its influence and of riding with a marijuana-using driver - more than double that of driving or riding after alcohol use, say researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences and University of Washington pediatrics department.

During the debate over the Affordable Care Act, among the biggest supporters were trial attorneys, and for obvious reasons. A government has unlimited deep pockets. Among those concerned were people in medicine who had seen the rise in 'defensive medicine' - tests and procedures everyone knows are a waste of time and money to check off boxes in case attorney sue

In the first large-scale study to directly measure such wasteful spending in Medicare, researchers found that Medicare spent $1.9 billion in 2009 for patients to receive any of 26 tests and procedures that have been shown to offer little or no health benefit.

A study of Italians who consume a diet rich in resveratrol — the compound found in red wine, dark chocolate and berries — finds they live no longer than and are just as likely to develop cardiovascular disease or cancer as those who eat a regular diet.

In 2014, drugs and alcohol are used primarily for pleasure and not to commune with nature or contact the spirit world.

In ancient times, opium poppies and hallucinogenic mushrooms were for gifted elites and their use went hand-in-hand with shamanistic belief systems and the sacred burial rituals of pre-industrial societies, according to a recent paper. 

Multiple lines of evidence incorporating 40 years of observations that six massive glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector "have passed the point of no return", a worrisome sign for melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Those glaciers already contribute to sea level rise, releasing as much ice into the ocean each year as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet does. They contain enough ice to boost the global sea level by 4 feet (1.2 meters) and are melting faster than most scientists had expected. Rignot said the findings will require that current predictions of sea level rise be revised upward.

Is it The Day After Tomorrow imagery that environmentalists and a lot of journalists like to create?