Recreational drugs and the brain (BP)

Question 1

Strength

Answer 1

I - supprting evidence of durg effects on the brain
J - Olds & Milner. Rats repeatedly press leaver, receive tiny jolts of current, targeted areas nucleus accumbens, 2000 time ph.
E - Reseach found dopamine also main chemical aiding neural signanling, later termed reward pathway

However: human brains more complec then rat brains so not able to generalise results as humans process pleasure in different ways

Question 2

Weakness

Answer 2

I - However, drug treatments only tackle neurobiology of drug addiction…
J - if the user doesn’t want to quit then they won’t take the final step. This is why drug treatments work best when combined with some sort of cognitive therapy that gets the user to re-think their priorities and choices.
E - therefore isolating a single neurotransmitter oversimplifies the complex process of addiction, humans use recreational drugs to regulate their mood, cope with stress, bond socially with friends or even out of curiosity or as a lifestyle statement. Neural biological explanations ignore all these choices and motivations treating dry users as slave to their own neurobiology, which can be considered reductionist, which states behaviour solely due to one factor.