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January 12th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda WEDNESDAY, Jan. 11 (HealthDay News) — A small Chinese study
suggests that the brains of teenagers who are seemingly addicted to the
Internet have abnormal “white matter,” the biological insulation that
surrounds the wiring between neurons.
It’s not clear if this difference could cause Internet addiction or
actually be caused by it. And the research doesn’t point to a
treatment or cure for Internet addiction, a controversial diagnosis that
the mental health community hasn’t universally accepted.
Still, the research makes sense because of the regions of the brain in
question, said Jonathan Wallis, an associate professor of psychology and
neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the
brain and is familiar with the new findings.
“The areas that they [the study authors] have pinpointed are ones that
we already know are involved in addiction and compulsive behavior,” he
said. The differences in white matter in the subjects described as
Internet addicts is “the kind of impairment that we’d expect to disrupt
the normal function of those areas.”
The existence of Internet addiction is a widely debated issue in the
world of mental health, especially since the main handbook of
psychological disorders — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders — is undergoing revision. Among other things, specialists
disagree over whether the condition is truly an addiction or fits into
another category.
Internet addiction has been an especially hot topic in China, where
researchers at Jiao Tong University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences
launched the new study.
The researchers gave MRI brain scans to 17 adolescents who appeared to
suffer from Internet addiction. Among other things, the teens said they
were preoccupied with the Internet, had repeatedly tried to control their
use without success, and felt restless, moody, depressed or irritable when
they tried to cut down.
The researchers compared their brain scans to those of 16 “healthy”
teens of the same ages and genders.
The scientists found that those teens who appeared to have Internet
addiction had impaired “white matter” connecting the parts of their brains
that deal with issues like decision-making.
White matter refers to the insulation that envelops the wiring that
connects brain cells called neurons, Wallis said. “They’re connected along
the biological equivalent of wire. Just like in any piece of electrical
equipment, you want insulation around those wires. The neurons lay down
fat, which stops the electrical charge from leaking out of the
neuron.”
So which came first, the damage to the insulation or the addiction
itself? “We don’t know whether the poor insulation connecting these areas
of the brain predisposes these people to developing compulsive behaviors
or whether engaging in a behavior repetitively could damage the
connections between brain areas,” Wallis said.
One possible theory is that the faulty insulation disrupts
communication in the brain to the point where a person thinks a behavior
is valuable and should be repeated over and over again, Wallis said. That,
he added, may be a key to addictions of various types.
The research offers more insight into how some people may be more prone
to addiction because of the way their brains work, said Gordon Harris, a
professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School who is studying
alcoholism and the brain.
“It’s not just a personal failing or weakness,” Harris said.
The new study findings appear in the Jan. 11 issue of the journal
PLoS One.
More information
For details about addiction medicine, try the U.S. National Library of
Medicine.
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