Parallels in biological, psychological, and behavioral systems have led to the hypothesis that an addictive process may contribute to problematic eating. The Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) was developed to provide a validated measure of addictive-like eating behavior based upon the diagnostic criteria for substance dependence. Recently, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder...

The dopaminergic D3 receptor (D3R) is emerging as an antagonist of sensitized behavior induced by addictive drugs such as cocaine. New work by Wang and coworkers in this issue of Neuron now identifies CaMKII as an important negative regulator of the D3R. CaMKII relieves the D3R-mediated inhibition on sensitized behavior to foster drug-seeking behavior.

PURPOSES This study examined the prevalence of addictive Internet use and analyzed the role of parental relationship in affecting this behavior among a random sample of adolescents in Wuhan, China. METHODS Students (n = 1,101) were randomly selected from four schools, including 638 boys and 463 girls with a mean age of 13.8 (standard deviation = 1.2) years. Addictive Internet use, parental re...

Focusing on World of Warcraft (WoW), the most popular massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), the present article stresses, that, similarly to addictive drugs, certain features of Internet applications may act on the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, and thus become addictive. The distinction is made between addictive products (e.g. nicotine, specific stimuli), first order vectors ...