Cocaine addiction affects cerebellar structure

Abstract

Long term cocaine use produces structural and functional effects in different brain locations. Recent studies point the cerebellum as one of the structures that show alterations in addicted subjects. There are studies that have documented structural differences in the cerebellum in addicted patients using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). However, this technique has not been specially designed for the study of the cerebellum. This study has analyzed cerebellar differences between healthy population and patients addicted to cocaine using CERES, a technique specifically designed for the volumetric analysis of the cerebellum. Furthermore, we explore the pharmacological treatment effects, by differentiating those patients who supplement psychological therapy with drugs have been analyzed separately from those who only received psychological therapy. The results show differences between healthy population and patients treated with psychological therapy only that result in a gray matter volume decrease in the cocaine dependent patients at the gray matter volume of the IX right lobule, the volumetric asymmetry in IX lobule and the cortical thickness asymmetry in V lobule. On the other hand, the results showed an increase in VIII A left lobule of cocaine dependent patients. These differential effects were not present for the pharmacologically treated group when compared with the control group, but a significantly greater gray matter volume in IV lobule with respect to the psychologically treated patients group. In sum, our study suggest the effects of pharmacological treatment during cocaine addiction treatment process that should be considered in future studies.