In the 1960s, discovery of pleasure system (defined as reward system) in the brain that may underlie drug reward and addiction encouraged many scientists to investigate the mechanisms by which drug abuse affects central nervous system function. In this regard, investigators developed several drugs targeting the brain reward system for drug dependence therapy. However, no positive results obtain...

Drug addiction is characterised by compulsive, uncontrollable drug use irrespective of its negative consequences. It has been recognised as a chronic disease with high possibility of relapse inflicting far-reaching psychological and physical damage on sufferers. 2 Over the past decade, the prevalence of illicit drug use has been stable at around 0.5% of the population globally but it varies by ...

Drug addiction is likely to affect all of our lives, with any luck not through our own actions but probably because of one or more of our family and friends. Now firmly entrenched as a brain disease (Leshner, 1999; Wise, 2000), drug addiction is among the most costly such diseases in modern society. Drug addiction is most often defined as a chronically relapsing disorder in which the addict exp...

Imaging studies have revealed neurochemical and functional changes in the brains of drug-addicted subjects that provide new insights into the mechanisms underlying addiction. Neurochemical studies have shown that large and fast increases in dopamine are associated with the reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse, but also that after chronic drug abuse and during withdrawal, brain dopamine functio...

There are currently effective, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved therapies for alcohol, nicotine, and opioid addiction. In some cases these therapeutics were rationally designed and tested using a combination of various animal models of addiction. In many cases, however, effective drug therapies for addiction were derived from the testing of compounds developed for other CNS diso...

Objective: Personality is the most important infrastructure factor in addiction, and substance abusers have certain personal weaknesses that make them vulnerable to addiction. This study examined the role of sensation-seeking and coping strategies in predicting drug addiction in high school students.  Methods: This study is a descriptive–correlational research. Multi-stage cluster sampling w...

BACKGROUND Risky sexual behavior (RSB), addiction, and aggression are three important personal and social factors which influence each other. OBJECTIVE To overview the potential relationship among RSB, addiction, and aggression to conduct an interactive model for the pathology and management of human behavior. METHODS This review article was carried out by searching studies in PubMed, Medli...