Why would students need and use drugs? Can brain science help addiction?

Latest guest by David Stephen, who looks at addiction and brain science in this article. 

There is report on PennLive, How one student became the ‘largest drug dealer’ at PSU: grand jury, stating that, “A confidential informant for police bought cocaine at Penn State University’s Delta Upsilon fraternity house six times from September to December of 2024.”

“When the dealer, PSU student Thomas Robinson, was arrested, police began unraveling a drug trafficking ring that led to charges against 14 people, including the man one witness said was the “largest distributor of cocaine” at PSU. And it wasn’t Robinson.”

Can brain science help addiction?

There is a recent press release,  HHS Awards Over $96 Million to Strengthen Mental Health, Suicide Prevention, and Substance Use Disorder Services, stating that, “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), today announced $96.7 million in grants and cooperative agreements to strengthen behavioral health services and supports across the country.”

“The awards provide funding for a range of behavioral health services and initiatives, including services for people with serious mental illness who are homeless, suicide prevention and early intervention, substance use disorder treatment, training and technical assistance, peer support, and disaster-related emotional support.”

“The awards announced today include the following: Providers Clinical Support System – Substance Use Disorder Treatment (PCSS-SUD Treatment) ($2.9 million), which provides training and technical assistance, mentoring, and ongoing support for healthcare professionals in general health and behavioral health settings to increase their capacity to identify and treat substance use disorders, especially opioid and alcohol use disorders.”

Penn State University [PSU]

Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi, Ph.D., can immediately explore two angles to combat substance use disorders across the University community: conceptual brain science and electrochemical psychiatry.

It is not great that a Penn State student was busted dealing drugs.

Instead of simply suspending the fraternity involved or taking other expected actions, Penn State can use the opportunity to explore how to solve drug addiction for students – existing and incoming across the United States.

Simply, why would drug use be an option for students? Is it anxiety of studying, the future, survival, external pressures or what? If the situation is bad, why should drugs be the option to cope?

These questions should be of immediate concern to the Penn State Neuroscience Institute team: Dr. Krish Sathian, MBBS, PhD, at Hershey and Nikki Crowley, PhD, at University Park. Then, Chair Erika Saunders, MD of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health.

Psychiatry has not made progress in defining the human mind or explaining disorders beyond labels and descriptions. Penn State can take the leap to find components and mechanisms in the brain that would answer for how addiction works, then explain it, as a digital service, while estimating for students, benign alternatives that can be useful to counteract the craving pleasure and tolerance of drugs.

Because there is nothing at all for now, if Penn State takes the leap, it would be a mighty step forward, changing how drug use is understood and explored for solutions. In summary, Penn State should use electrical and chemical signals to explain how and why drug addiction works, placing it as an effort to increase will and resist helplessness.

Depression and Addiction

If depression and addiction are assumed to be problems of the human mind, progress would be to explore what the mind is, to isolate all the relays and hubs of mind that determine the experience of depression.

What is the human mind? Early options are genes and neurons. Genes are established to be the architects of human existence.

The human genome has already been mapped, in full. However, there are other options that structure nurture functions aside from genes. For example, an offspring has the genes of the parents, but the language that the offspring would speak may depend on another factor.

Simply, the capacity for language is possible by genes, but the language content is organized by another factor. Language is directly a function of the mind, just like several others, ruling out genes as the human mind—with this example, though others like subjects at school, neuroplasticity and so forth also rule out genes as the human mind, conceptually.

Genes often make calls, or act as engines, when expressed, but the wheels of functions are different.

Neurons in several parts of the human brain have been mapped. There is a field called connectomics dedicated to this science. So far, with advances in neuroscience, there has never been a neuron that has been identified for language, math, or others. Neurons are known to be active during functions.

But if neurons were the human mind, it would mean that they change in a certain way for a function, and then others in another way. Simply, for different aspects of language, or subjects, or smells, some neurons would be something, different from others. Then neurons for smell may also be different from neurons for touch.

There have not been neural differences, observed from neuroimaging and connectomics, to indicate that neurons are changing much or that their anatomy is responsible for a function or functions, directly.

So, if genes and neurons are not the human mind, what might the human mind be? Also, if what the human mind is, is theorized, how does it work, what is order in the mind, what is disorder? What happens in the mind that results in the experience of depression and addiction?

Human Mind

The human mind is theorized to be the collection of all the electrical and chemical signals, in sets, with their interactions and features, in clusters of neurons across the central and peripheral nervous systems.

Electrical and chemical signals have to interact in sets, to determine functions. Electrical and chemical signals have their features that determine the measures for those interactions.

Interactions are principally the strikes of electrical signals on chemical signals, in sets. Features include prioritization, pre-prioritization, splits, old sequences, new sequences, principal spot, arrays, thick sets, thin sets, intensity and so on.

A few of these can be theorized to be responsible for depression and addiction.

Possible Components of Substance Use Disorder

It is theorized that depression and addiction are problems of the principal spot, which is a prioritization segment of sets of signals.

Prioritization is defined as the set of chemical signals with the most volumes among all in any instance. This means that when a set has the most volume among all, it becomes prioritized. It is prioritization that defines what is labeled as attention. Other sets are pre-prioritized. There are often fast and numerous interchanges between pre-prioritized sets and the prioritized set.

The prioritized set often has a distribution veto, in the prioritized instance. This means that it can distribute summaries of its configuration, to several other sets of signals, in that instance. The prioritized set also has a high totalization index, which means that the set of electrical signals can interact with the full spectrum of the set,  making it possible to access its functions.

It is prioritization that makes listening different from hearing, or many instances or main vision different from other instances of peripheral vision [although main vision can be pre-prioritized, but may be in the array, to be prioritized again].

The sets of signals with volumes that may be prioritized are often in an array. This means that recently prioritized or those that are likely to be prioritized are often arrayed, such that they can switch and then distribute, then switch again multiple times. It is the interchanges between prioritization and pre-prioritization that makes it possible to do several tasks at the same time, like driving, speaking, listening to music and so forth.

Prioritization is also useful in the mind, not for where to focus attention or what to change, so that there is a urgency to reduce it.

Beyond prioritization is what is called the principal spot, it means the set of signals with the most domination. This means that it is not just attention, or the ability to be in the array, but to lead the array, determine distributions, have totalized interactions and be there for some time.

This principal spot is not necessarily a physical location, but a chemical signal configuration that keeps the maximum volume nearly constant, such that displacing it may become less frequent than regular prioritization.

There are sets of signals for everything. All experiences are configurations of sets of signals, conceptually. There is a set of signals for emptiness. There is another for fatigue. There is a set of signals for pleasure, and another for a smell, a taste and so forth.

Chemical signals hold these configurations, but electrical signals have to interact with them to access the configurations. There are several prioritization categories, but two of them include prioritization counterbalances and prioritization continuity. Counterbalance may be explained with [say] being thirsty and drinking water, such that the new prioritization cancels the old one.

Although the old one may [try to] persist in some cases, if the new one is sufficient enough the old one goes away. There are several other examples of prioritization like when a demand is canceled out by the supply, even if the [say] element [water or food] is yet to be absorbed by the body – so to speak.

Prioritization continuity is the situation where prioritization continues to build in a set, such that if there is no pause or break, it keeps going, not allowing other functions to get prioritized, while possibly over-using that function, which may cause issues in other sets that do not get prioritized, or even in the set, by over-using the volumes that are possible. Simply, there are sets where the prioritization may not change and would keep going without a break.

An example could be muscle use in one direction for a long time, or heat strokes, or severe cold. While some sets of signals may, in a prioritized situation, switch to something else in pre-prioritization, giving some break to that set, some sets would just keep going, until it breaks in some problematic way.

This means that [say] music is within earshot during some experiences [or say prioritization of some sets] it is possible that switches between the sets for the music and those of the experience would ensure that the experience has prioritization breaks, but some sets may not allow – and keep going. Sometimes, this continuance is a result of the principal spot.

There are sets of signals that are for experiences of nothing or regular, such that they are not just prioritized after say, thirst, but can also be prioritized in cases of just normality.

Depression

Depression is theorized to be a set of signals for nothingness moving to the principal spot, allowing it to lead the array of distribution and dominate against anything else that is pre-prioritized or prioritized. Simply, depression is a state where a set of signals that is supposed to be a neutral set, moves into the principal spot, then gives out distributions of the summaries of its configurations, which [then] becomes how some other sets that should not normally get the distributions do so.

For example, the set responsible for excitement or [say] pleasure may instead get distributions from the set of ‘neutral’, or the set for satisfaction from something may get the same. There can also be others like heaviness or lethargy getting distributions and becoming sometimes prioritized, since some sets of signals for lethargy and nothing may share the same thick set [a feature].

Simply, depression is theorized to be a state of the mind, where the set of signals that is supposed to be neutral becomes prioritized and moves to the principal spot, where it dominates, such that allowance for prioritization from other sets, whose prioritization may displace it, are reduced. It may also distribute to other sets like heaviness or fatigue, which may then distribute to apathy.

Depression is a set of the relays and interactions of electrical and chemical signals of the mind, which can be displayed for every symptom of the condition.

Addiction

Addiction is the movement of craving to the principal spot, which dominates arrays. Simply, craving is at the head of arrays, which distributes its configurations to other sets, making it appear like there is a general need for ‘the thing’. This is also expanded by splits of electrical signals [a feature], which after the last intake, there is an early split to the set of signal for pleasure, satisfaction or notice of taking it, but this does not get the full interaction, thereby, signaling that something is not complete, so another intake becomes desired.

Simply, after the last intake, there is a split of electrical signals, to the same destination, but without the full summary that it had been taken and then without the full interaction at the destination, which then distributes to an experience of absence, which may then move the urge for the craving.

Addiction can also be a result of depression, where there is just a continuous intake, to try to drive away the emptiness from the principal spot.

AI and Mind Displays

The necessity of a probabilistic way the human mind works and what occurs in an addiction, such that knowing what might be responsible, like principal spot, arrays, prioritization, splits of signals and so forth, may become a way to shape how therapy becomes possible or what to do pre-rehab, during or post-rehab.

Large language models [LLMs] can be used to display and describe the mind, with this concept, for every symptom of substance use disorder, so that it is possible to understand what it might be, and to find what might be appropriate, rather than trying different things, which may not work at all.

The goal is to ensure that progress is possible and fast enough against addiction.

Penn State can explore the postulate in Conceptual Biomarkers and Theoretical Biological Factors for Psychiatric and Intelligence Nosology before August 31, 2026 towards setting up this project, for a digital outcome by the end of September and giving it to [and beyond] the University community.

David Stephen does research in conceptual brain science and served as a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He did computer vision research at Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona.

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