Digital Set Up For Drug Abuse – Dr Lalith Mendis
Digital Surplus & Drug Addiction
- Digital surplus causes drug addiction in two ways.
- Digital multitasking depletes dopamine in the brain contributing to lethargy. Students take stimulants to get back the kick
- When digitally high (brain dopamine * serotonin out of sync) also students take stimulants. Digital addiction calls for other addictive chemicals.
Digitalization & Thrills
Digital stimulation works on brain tracts to boost thrill, in a way that both small children & bigger ones lose sense of danger or what is possible. So a little kid will approach a stairway & not know she cannot climb down, which sense normal children have. This lack of proportion, thinking fantasy, daring risk – leads to hurtful escapades. Breaking the law is not far away and this what makes Police officers to organise digital safety lectures – why do kids of decent background court illegal thrills including drugs. Both the dopamine drivenness & the thrill seeking lead to drug issues.
Digital stimulant effect has 5 components
- Time length of exposure to LED screen – more than 25 min
- Pixel per inch (PPI) of smart phone
- Rate of pixel change in cartoon frame
- Intensity and variability of sound and colour
- Time of exposure effect is more after 6 pm
- Multitasking
- Sleep deprivation
- Preserve Screen time for essentail study
Pixel Driven Neurotoxicity
- Neurotoxicity is when neurones give up preferred mode unidirectional firing & turn to non-preferred multidirectional firing when kid is on the screen with continuous Pixel (photon) bombardment
- Neurochemical transmitters – Dopamine & Serotonin functional outside optimal U Curve as it should during homeostasis
- More than 25 min of the LED screen causes change to Neurone Homeostasis
Salience & Satiety
- Normal brain activity has Dopamine U Curve for Salience/focus alternating with Serotonin U Curve for Satiety & Assess
- With continued digital stimulation dopamine does not come to resting level – this causes drive, impulsivity, agitation, addiction, repetitive, reflexive, reactive behaviour
- Serotonin cannot exercise its satisfaction
- Many other chemical transmitters are in disarray
- Brain asks for more chemicals
- Dopamine upsurge is not balanced by Voluntary Muscle action
Consequences on School Life
- Attention Span & depth decrease
- Boredom, inability to focus or concentrate
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome of the Young – dopamine depletion because of digital overuse
- Learning is uninteresting
- Regular is boring – fantastic is the craving
- Thrill seeking behaviour
- Recruiting anti-reward systems – Pain becomes pleasure
- Isolated selfie behaviour
- Empathic Motor Therapy
Digital Games And Violent Cartoons
Thus, during stress of digital games and violent cartoons, orchestration of the brain’s response patterns switches from slow, thoughtful PFC regulation to the reflexive and rapid emotional responses of the amygdala and related subcortical structures.
Spook Spirituality
Digitalised children move from reality to fantasy. When your imagination is not grounded (terrestrial), it becomes spooky celestial. Some cartoons & digital games invoke the supranormal. Even if we deny, man is incurably religious – spiritual, if parents do not direct them to safe spiritual, they will experiment with spook (fake) spiritual or evil spiritual. This has to be factored in a kid showing disturbed sleep, temper tantrum, fear, depression, suicidal tendency, aggression, phobia,
Learning
- Attention Span & depth decrease
- Comprehension
- Committal to Memory
- Connection & Correlation
- Collation
- Recall
- Application
- Reproduction at Examination
- Reading habit
Food Habits
- Digital junkie also becomes a food junkie
- This is the beginning of addiction
- Kid avoids large rice meal at regular times.
- They discover the aroused (dopamine driven ) brain tracts are further stimulated by sugary drinks. Tip tips, additives in fast foods.
- Cortisol increase with fight, flight, fright mode perpetuated by digital thrill provokes wrong fat metabolism, obesity, steatosis & even young cirrhosis
Sleep
- Pixel stimulation suppresses melatonin secretion
- This is worse with screen after 6 pm
- Preserve screen time for study only
- Rem sleep is disturbed
- Glymphatic system function in the brain is disturbed
- Neuronal recovery & night time brain program are disrupted.
- Learning process suffers – attention, memory, connection, collation, recall, application, reproduction – all diminish
Sleep & Learning
- We dream during deep sleep or REM – usually between 1 – 4am
- We need to be in deep sleep – we should sleep by 11 pm
- During dream brain runs a software program much like defragmentation of a computer
- In deep healthy sleep child’s character grows & brain neuronally “refurbishes”.
- In sleep new baby neurones are generated. Dendritic spikes from previous day activity come to normal rhythm
- Sleep restores Melatonin in retinal cells & prevents macular degeneration caused by too much blue light.
Digital Stimulation & Drug Addiction
Digital stimulation sets dopamine & Serotonin cycles in kid or youth brain at variance with each other – driven without satisfaction – Simulating ADHD. This recruits anti-reward systems involving opioids that interpret pain as pleasure – hence the dyspathic selfie behaviour as happens in chronic stress, PTSD & other addictions. The recent Harvard study underscores my working hypothesis over last 4 years – try empathic small motor activity to overwrite the multidirectional firing of dopamine connections. Digital screen spurs up dopamine discharge violating the U curve homeostasis. Directed Motor activity provides a respite for the over charged dopamine networks to resume U curve.
Revert to Repetitive Reactive Pathways
Digital addiction works just like other addictive conditions. Salience, initiation, navigation, conclusion – mediated via optimal dopamine response (not too high, not too low) are dysregulated because of continued dopamine drive. Satiety mediated via optimal serotonin producing reward motive has been dysregulated with serotonin spiking to achieve satiety competing with the dopamine drive. In this scenario inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity are only symptoms of underlying dysregulation of motivational systems. (1) Why this simulates ADHD is because executive empathic pathways commencing in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) have been overwritten by the repetitive, reflexive, reactive, cyclical stress survival pathways of the ventero medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) responding to subcortical input from amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus. (2)
Recruit Antireward Systems
In this framework, digital addiction causes a cycle of decreased function of brain reward systems and recruitment of anti-reward systems that progressively worsen, resulting in the compulsive use of more digital games etc. Counter-adaptive processes, such as opponent process, that are part of the normal homeostatic limitation of reward function fail to return within the normal homeostatic range and repeatedly drive the allostatic state. Excessive digital gaming and cartoons thus results in the short-term amelioration of the reward deficit. However, in the long term, there is worsening of the underlying neurochemical dysregulations that ultimately form an allostatic state (decreased dopamine and opioid peptide function, increased corticotropin-releasing factor activity). This allostatic state is reflected in a chronic deviation of reward set point that is fuelled not only by dysregulation of reward circuits but also by recruitment of brain and hormonal stress responses. (3), (4)
Impulsivity, Inattention And Hyperactivity
D1 receptors of dopamine are overcharged by pixel (digital) stimulation causing poor working memory. D1 receptors function best in a limited middle range of Dopamine concentration. Too low there is apathy; too high there is impulsivity. Excessive stimulation causes delay-related firing of the neurons’ non-preferred directions with brain having increased background “noise”. Increased dopamine, noradrenaline and cortisol in these children brains inhibit executive empathic functions of the prefrontal cortex producing the impulsivity, inattention and hyperactivity of ADHD. Heavy users of smart phones are likely to develop the left side of their brains, leaving the right side untapped or underdeveloped, The right side of the brain is linked with concentration and its failure to develop will affect attention and memory span, which could in as many as 15% of cases lead to the early onset of dementia.
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