People, who are cocaine addict, are less sensitive to social events and do not enjoy contacts with other people because of the abnormalities in the structure of their brain's pleasure center. This is stated in Article neuroscientists published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Regular intake of cocaine causes a strong psychological dependence. In addition, its long-term use causes paranoia, extremely high irritability and propensity to violence and suicide.

Catherine Preller of the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and her colleagues uncovered one of the possible causes of social problems in cocaine addicts, following the work of the brain and behavior during the "dialogue" with a virtual character. To do this, the authors collected two groups of young people - 63 healthy British and 80 cocaine addicts.

During the experiment the scientists asked volunteers to sit near the computers and monitor the actions of their "buddy" on the screen. The program was able to follow the movements of the human eye using a web camera, creating the illusion that the computer "avatar" looks straight into his eyes.

It turned out that addicts respond to much weaker contact than healthy young people. This was reflected in the movements of their eyes and pupils, and in the brain work.

Thus, the activity in that part of the pleasure center in their brain, which is responsible for social behavior was much lower than that of men in the control group. This fact may explain why the cocaine addict people suffer from a number of social problems in chronic drug taking.