What Is the “Trigger” of Addiction? (original) (raw)
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What Neurobiology Tells Us About Addiction
Addiction, 2010
studies) [12]. Currently I have the privilege of participating in an interdisciplinary research consortium on stress, self-control and addiction (http://stress.yale.edu/ and http://stress.yale.edu/projects.html). The consortium includes 14 coordinated and integrated research projects that involve rats, non-human primates and humans and use molecular/cellular, genetic, brain imaging, behavioral, clinical and epidemiological approaches. While there exist organizational and logistical challenges in conducting interdisciplinary team science, such an approach holds significant promise for understanding complex neuropsychiatric conditions such as addiction that are currently frequently refractory to existing treatments [13]. Even if such studies do not identify the cause of addiction [14], they have tremendous potential for generating significant advances in prevention and treatment strategies and reducing the suffering and societal burden associated currently with addictions.
Biological Mechanisms Underlying Addiction
International Journal of Human and Health Sciences (IJHHS)
Addiction is a behavioral disorder related to alterations in neurobiological systems involved in reward system, brain stress response, physical withdrawal, inhibition and executive control. Alcohol or drug addiction does not occur without using these substances but genetic and epigenetic variations in these neurobiological systems cause individual differences. The current review summarizes the literature on the biological basis of drug addiction. In addition, this review tries to explain the path from occasional recreational substance use to the compulsive, addicted state. It will help understand why avoiding psychoactive drugs or not to start using is very crucial.International Journal of Human and Health Sciences Vol. 02 No. 03 July’18. Page : 107-111
Nature Neuroscience, 2005
Addictive drugs have habit-forming actions that can be localized to a variety of brain regions. Recent advances in our understanding of the chemical 'trigger zones' in which individual drugs of abuse initiate their habit-forming actions have revealed that such disparate drugs as heroin, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, phencyclidine, and cannabis activate common reward circuitry in the brain. Although these drugs have many actions that are distinct, their habit-forming actions (and perhaps the relevant elements of their disparate withdrawal symptoms) appear to have a common denominator, namely, similar effects in the brain mechanisms of reward.
NEUROBIOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON ADDICTION
2009
Over the past several decades, animal, and more recently human research has increasingly suggested that human addictive behaviours have a genetic and neurobiological basis (Volkow and Li, 2004; Nutt et al., 2007b; Schumann, 2007). Animal models of drug self-administration have enabled the brain pathways involved in the rewarding effects of drugs to be identified (Koob and Le Moal, 2006).
Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2017
The term dependency is increasingly being used also to explain symptoms resulting from the repetition of a behavior or legalized and socially accepted activities that do not involve substance assumption. These activities, although considered normal habits of daily life can become real addictions that may affect and disrupt socio-relational and working functioning. Growing evidence suggests to consider behavioral addictions similar to drug dependence for their common symptoms, the high frequency of poly-dependence conditions, and the correlation in risk (impulsivity, sensation seeking, early exposure, familiarity) and protective (parental control, adequate metacognitive skills) factors. The aim of this paper is to describe addiction in its general aspects, highlighting the underlying neurobiological and psychopathological mechanisms.
Neuroscience of Addiction: Relevance to Prevention and Treatment
The American journal of psychiatry, 2018
Addiction, the most severe form of substance use disorder, is a chronic brain disorder molded by strong biosocial factors that has devastating consequences to individuals and to society. Our understanding of substance use disorder has advanced significantly over the last 3 decades in part due to major progress in genetics and neuroscience research and to the development of new technologies, including tools to interrogate molecular changes in specific neuronal populations in animal models of substance use disorder, as well as brain imaging devices to assess brain function and neurochemistry in humans. These advances have illuminated the neurobiological processes through which biological and sociocultural factors contribute to resilience against or vulnerability for drug use and addiction. The delineation of the neurocircuitry disrupted in addiction, which includes circuits that mediate reward and motivation, executive control, and emotional processing, has given us an understanding o...
Behavioral Perspectives on the Neuroscience of Drug Addiction
Drug addiction continues to take a massive toll in terms of economic loss and human misery. For the purpose of this article, we define drug addiction as the final outcome of a process that begins with occasional drug-taking, and ends with consumption of excessive amounts of drug to the detriment of society and the individual. Drug addiction is a chronic, relapsing disorder that provides research and treatment challenges to scientists from widely ranging disciplines. Among these, geneticists and epidemiologists are particularly intrigued by the fact that drug-taking behavior exists on a continuum in humans: some people engage in it to excess, most in moderation, and many not at all. Clearly, genetic differences and specific societal-environmental conditions can play a role in the development of drug abuse. Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists attend more to the individual characteristics of the drug abuser, and consider how other cognitive co-morbidities, such as anxiety or depression, contribute to the development and maintenance of drug abuse and addiction. Pharmacologists tend to focus on the drugs themselves, studying their mechanisms of action and attempting to develop potential drug antagonists that might be useful in the treatment of drug abuse. And behavioral pharmacologists look for clues to the etiology and control of drug abuse in the effects of drugs on the behavior of humans or animals under controlled experimental conditions. Neuroscience, because it searches for relationships between brain function and behavior, is in an especially appropriate position to study the neural correlates of the behavior of drug abuse, and neuroscientists have contributed a tremendous amount to our understanding of the effects of drugs of abuse on the brain and nervous system. This article will address some of the neuroscience
Toward a critical neuroscience of 'addiction'
BioSocieties, 2010
Early to mid-twentieth century studies on the neurophysiology of the role of conditioned cues in relapse, conducted at the Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky, were the historical antecedents to today's neuroimaging studies. Attempts in the 1940s to see 'what's going on in the brains of these addicts' were formative for the field, as was foundational work done in the 1940s and 1950s by Abraham Wikler on conditioned cues, the role of what he called the 'limbic system' in relapse, and possible uses of narcotic antagonists to prevent relapse by extinguishing cues. This article sketches the historical context in order to situate continuities between historical antecedents and a current ethnographic case study focused on current neuroimaging studies of the role of 'craving' -and neural processes that precede conscious 'craving' and occur 'outside awareness' -in relapse conducted by Anna Rose Childress at the Treatment Research Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The article showcases the incommensurability between claims that 'addiction' is a matter of individual choice, and claims that it is a neurochemical disorder disruptive of volition. Neuroscientists offer scientific vocabulary and imagery that both shape and respond to the social experience of addiction. The conclusion considers the value of moving toward a critical neuroscience more cognizant of the social worlds in which 'addiction' occurs, not in the restricted sense of 'social factors' but through awareness of the social-situational contexts and relationships within which 'addictions' are experienced and studied.
Neuron, 1998
The underlying molecular and cellular changes that Department of Neuropharmacology The Scripps Research Institute occur with the transition from occasional drug use to pathological abuse and addiction are only partially un-La Jolla, California 92037 derstood as yet. To reach a more complete understanding, these events will have to be integrated with the animal models of the different elements of the addiction Human addictions are chronically relapsing disorders process, including models of the transition from simple characterized by compulsive drug taking, an inability drug taking to compulsive use at the molecular, cellular, to limit the intake of drugs, and the emergence of a and behavioral levels. In this review, we will focus in withdrawal syndrome during cessation of drug taking particular on the factors that drive drug-seeking behav-(dependence). The development of an addiction impacts ior at different stages of the addiction cycle (Koob and on several separate neurobiological processes, and Le Moal, 1997), and we will place particular emphasis these effects are both drug-and drug use-dependent. on trying to identify what is currently known and what In animal models of addiction, changes in specific neuremains to be elucidated. rotransmitter systems within a highly limited band of structures, including specific parts of the nucleus accumbens and amygdala, may underlie drug reward and Neurobiological Substrates for the Acute the motivational effects associated with dependence.
Addiction and the brain: the neurobiology of compulsion and its persistence
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2001
The defining characteristic of addiction is compulsive, out-of-control drug use despite serious negative consequences. The life of an addicted person becomes progressively focused on obtaining, using and recovering from the effects of drugs, despite illness, disrupted relationships and failures in life roles 1,2 . For example, we know of a physician who, despite extensive vascular surgery and threatened amputations, continues to smoke cigarettes; many clinicians have seen individuals who attempt to smoke through a tracheotomy tube after a laryngectomy for cancer; and, despite loss of employment and life-threatening complications of cirrhosis, many people continue to drink alcohol even when drinking yields depression rather than pleasure. These examples highlight the central question of addiction: what happens in the brain to cause an addicted person to lose control of drug-taking behaviour even when experiencing serious drug-related harm?