Learning theories of Addiction Flashcards
(36 cards)
What are habits?
- Mechanisms that don’t require conscious
- Impulse to engage in habits is stronger than desire to restrain
How are habitual behavioural patterns developed?
-Developed independently of conscious evaluation of pros and cons
What is operant conditioning?
- The punishment or reward following you doing something
- Learning by consequences
What are the two factors behind operant conditioning?
- Positive reinforcement
- Negative reinforcement
What is positive reinforcement?
- Increases probability of a behaviour occurring by presentation of reward
- Behaviour (take drug): Reward (get high)
What is negative reinforcement?
- Increases probability of a behavior by removing discomfort
- Stimulus (withdrawal, depression): Response (take drug)
When does the most effective reinforcement occur?
-After a behaviour
What type of drugs are most addictive and why is this the case?
- Intravenous drugs
- Smoking or Heroin
- Almost instant effects
- Reward is felt immediately
What is intermittent reinforcement?
- reinforcement does not occur every time
- ratio or schedule of reinforcement
How do animals utilise reinforcement?
-Learn avoid and escape comfort
What are cues aka?
- Discriminative stimuli
- Tie in well with classical conditioning
What is the strength of learning determined by?
- Nature of the reinforcer
- The schedule of reinforcement
- For how long the schedule is in place
What chemical and pathway underpins this reinforcement of learning?
-Dopamine in the meso-limbic pathway
Which areas of brain release dopamine?
-VTA and NA
Is dopamine release the same for all scenarios?
- No
- Brain titrates the release of dopamine depending on situation
- Hence why you feel happier for certain stimuli over others
fav sandwhich vs winning lottery
What are the three components of the mesolimbic dopaminergic pathway?
- ventral midbrain
- via medial forebrain bundle
- to limbic region
What is role of limbic system and what are the components?
- emotional responses
- forebrain (amygdala, NA, striatum)
What effect do dependence based drugs have on dopamine release?
-increase dopamine in the nucleus accumbens
What is cocaine and what does this mean?
- dopamine reuptake inhibitor
- prevents reuptake of dopamine
- so synaptic conc stays high
- extended highs
What type of transmitter is dopamine?
-monoamine
Summary drug dependence model
Experimentation
Positive reinforcement
Repeated use
Tolerance
Withdrawal
Drug Seeking (Negative Reinforcement)
Drug Dependence
What is tolerance?
- Idea that if you take same amount of drug consistently, your body reacts less over period of time
- increased threshold of reward
- requires more of drug to reach same level of pleasure
- Compensatory mechanism to maintain homeostasis
Describe brief process of classical conditioning
- Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) elicits an Unconditioned Response (UCR)
- Neutral stimulus (NS) found that doesn’t elicit UCR
- Neutral stimulus repeatedly paired with UCS
- Neutral stimulus becomes a Conditioned Stimulus (CS) that can elicit the Conditioned Response (CR)
Example of classical conditioning
- provide food (UCS), trigger salivating (UCR)
- play sound such as bell (NS)
- Food and bell paired together (NS and UCS)
- Leads to response where dog known food is there when they hear bell (CS leads to CR)
