IMPORTANCE Substance use disorders (SUDs) are among the most common sequelae of childhood maltreatment, yet the independent contributions of SUDs and childhood maltreatment to neurobiological changes and the effect of the latter on relapse risk (a critical variable in addiction treatment) are relatively unknown. OBJECTIVES To identify structural neural characteristics independently associated...

Stress plays a major role in the process of drug addiction and various stressors are known to increase measures of craving in drug dependent human laboratory subjects. Animal models of stress-induced reinstatement of drug-seeking have also been developed in order to determine the neuropharmacological and neurobiological features of stress-induced relapse. Here, we review experimental approaches...

A number of brain systems have been implicated in addictive behavior, but none have yet been shown to be necessary for maintaining the addiction to cigarette smoking. We found that smokers with brain damage involving the insula, a region implicated in conscious urges, were more likely than smokers with brain damage not involving the insula to undergo a disruption of smoking addiction, character...

Article history: Received on: 13/02/2013 Revised on: 15/02/2013 Accepted on: 09/03/2013 Available online: 28/03/2013 Drug addiction presents a chronic relapsing disorder characterized by persistent drug-seeking and taking behaviors. Given the significant detrimental effects of this disease both socially and economically, a considerable research has been dedicated to understanding a number of is...

The nucleus accumbens is a major input structure of the basal ganglia and integrates information from cortical and limbic structures to mediate goal-directed behaviors. Chronic exposure to several classes of drugs of abuse disrupts plasticity in this region, allowing drug-associated cues to engender a pathologic motivation for drug seeking. A number of alterations in glutamatergic transmission ...

Impulsive behavior such as steep temporal discounting is a hallmark of addiction and is associated with relapse. In pathological gamblers, discounting may be further increased by the presence of gambling-related cues in the environment, but the extent to which the gambling relatedness of task settings affects reward responses in gambling addiction is debated. In the present study, human problem...

One of the main difficulties of addiction treatment is the high risk of relapse even after a long abstinence and fully detoxification. Therefore, discovering the underlying molecular principles of relapse is essential. The metabotropic glutamate receptor, mGluR5, is considered to be involved in this aspect. One of the brain structures expressing mGluR5 is the striatum, an area with well-establi...

Physical-dependence-based theories of addiction regard compulsive drug taking as the behavioral manifestation of a desperate need to relieve aversive autonomic withdrawal symptoms. In the present article, the withdrawal-relief paradigm, or opiate model of addiction, is critically examined in the light of recent experimental and clinical evidence for various addictive drugs. It is concluded that...

Differing classes of abused drugs utilize different mechanisms of molecular pharmacological action yet the overuse of these same drugs frequently leads to the same outcome: addiction. Similarly, episodes of stress can lead to drug-seeking behaviors and relapse in recovering addicts. To overcome the labor-intensive headache of having to design a specific addiction-breaking intervention tailored ...