Heads up real news about drugs and your body.

• Author: Volkow, Nora D.

Dear Teacher:

This year's Heads Up series focuses on the human brain and gives students an abundance of valuable information through expertly crafted infographics. We start off with an article about the amazing abilities of the human brain in the context of the evolution of the brain's reward system. Unhealthy behaviors, like using drugs and eating large quantities of unhealthy food, can overload the reward system, throwing us out of balance and possibly into jeopardy.

In the accompanying work sheet, we put students' brains to the test and demonstrate for them, in real time, the brain's remarkable ability to make predictions and solve ambiguities, and help students to better understand how drugs might compromise these capabilities.

I encourage you to share these important materials with your students to help them understand how to protect one of their...