Neurobiology of addiction

Question 1

Addiction

Answer 1

Abnormal “passion”, compulsive pattern, lack of control over behavior and cessation, albeit it is harmful

Question 2

Drugs of abuse

Answer 2

Directly stimulate the reward system, causing increase extracellular dopamine (DA) concentration in the ventral striatum.

DA is a common substrate for te abuse liability and addictive/reinforcing properties of drugs and substances of abuse”

Reinforcing and rewarding

Question 3

Addictive behavior is based on…?

Answer 3

learning processes

Question 4

Pharmacological blocking of glutamate receptors

Answer 4

impaird self-administration as well as place preference

Question 5

Reward system

Answer 5

Prefrontal cortex: impulsivity, emotions, automatic behavior

Hippocampus: novelty-gated information storage, contextual information.

Amygdala: emotional response, reward learning

Ventral tegmental area: DA neurons (pleasure neurons)