Psychiatry researchers at the University of Chicago have received a $3.22 million grant from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a division of the National Institutes of Health. The research project, led by Emil Coccaro, MD, and Andrea King, PhD, both professors in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, will study how alcohol abuse affects people with a history of aggression. "Aggression is a serious problem that affects a lot of people, both those who have aggression and those who are on the receiving end," Coccaro said. Surveys show that 3.6 percent of adults in the United States meet all the clinical criteria for aggression, also known as intermittent explosive disorder (IED). Up to 7.6 percent of adults have at least three major outbursts per year. Alcohol use is linked with aggression, and people who have signs of impulsive aggression are more likely to be problem drinkers as well.
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Yet little is known about the actual neuroscience of what alcohol does to the brain in aggressive people. Research suggests that the amygdala, part of the brain involved in decision-making and emotional processing, overreacts to perceived threats in people with aggression. Long-term alcohol abuse dampens responses to threats in the amygdala, which would seem to counteract the aggressive responses. Instead, alcohol makes the aggression worse, turning an angry person into an even angrier drunk. Coccaro and King plan to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor what is happening in the brain as people with and without a history of aggression respond to perceived threats while under the influence of alcohol. During the imaging process, 133.6.219.42 research participants will be given saline or alcohol through an IV until the amount of alcohol reaches the legal limit for intoxication. The research participants will also watch videos of different interactions between people and answer surveys about whether they perceived the interactions as threatening or with bad intentions. For example, after watching a martial arts competition, they might be asked if the fight was fair or if one of the fighters cheated. The way they answer these questions are a gauge of their own responses to threats. Aggressive people overreact or assume bad intentions in what most people would see as a harmless situation. Coccaro and King’s team will examine whether there are differences in brain activity between people with a history of aggression and those without, Deals and possibly reveal new opportunities for treatment. "Aggression is misunderstood because it’s not just bad behavior. There’s a real biological basis in the brain," Coccaro said.
It had been five months since her tap water turned brown, since her skin broke out in a furious rash, since Zion, her nine-year-old daughter, complained that the smell of the water made her sick. Shea, 32, clamped her mouth shut in the shower and barred Zion from drinking from school water fountains. She used bottled water to brush their teeth. She made her mother, Renée, 55, promise to swear off tap water, too. Even so, Renée noticed her hair was falling out. It had been thinning for months. But now it was coming off in clumps. She obsessed over it-they were so careful. Finally, it clicked. Renée worked for General Motors. She drank coffee every day, sipping it to stay alert during the punishing third shift. It was brewed with water from Flint. Shea and Zion were born and raised in Flint. Renée has lived there since she was a kid. Like so many Rust Belt cities, Flint has been hollowed out by economic change.
But the Cobbs have stuck with it, watching it become a twenty-first century ghost town. A writer for The Detroit News described Flint in 1983 as a place in which "there are so few people about that you might think the neutron bomb had hit." But to these three generations of women, it's home. When I visited these women over this past winter and spring, to learn about how one family endured the water crisis, they stressed that to me. Flint was family. Family was Flint-until now. This is the story of how a town loses a family and a family loses a town. In 2013, the Flint City Council voted to leave the expensive Detroit water system and contract with the still-incomplete Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), a water-distribution corporation. But while the city waited to join the KWA, Flint would need an interim water source. In June, state-appointed emergency manager Ed Kurtz ruled that Flint would start to draw water from the 78.3-mile Flint River, which flows from Lapeer County into the Saginaw Bay.
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder had awarded Kurtz the job the year before in his latest bid to reverse Flint's financial downturn. The autumn before the switch to Flint River water, Flint had a $19 million deficit. Using the Flint River would save the city about $5 million over the course of two years. Officials promised that Flint residents-mostly black and 40 percent poor-wouldn't even notice the difference. On April 25, 2014, shoedrop.shop Flint's mayor, Dayne Walling, shoes invited about a dozen people to join him at a small water treatment plant to commemorate what he deemed a "historic moment." The switch would let Flint "return to its roots," Walling said. Someone started a countdown. A pitcher and plastic cups materialized. Officials raised their cups of Flint River water and toasted: "Here's to Flint." At zero, the mayor pressed a small black button, which turned off the flow from Detroit. Within weeks, the complaints streamed in.