Drug addiction presents as a chronic relapsing disorder characterized by persistent drug-seeking and drug-taking behaviours. Given the significant detrimental effects of this disease both socially and economically, a considerable amount of research has been dedicated to understanding a number of issues in addiction, including behavioural and neuropharmacological factors that contribute to the d...

INTRODUCTION Drug addiction is a serious public health problem that consists of a compulsive drive to take drugs despite repeated severe adverse consequences (1). Factors that influence the development and maintenance of addiction include access to drugs, social environment, genetic predisposition, and psychiatric comorbidities (2). Even in the absence of specific psychiatric diagnoses, certain...

Recent studies have shown that the fruitfly Drosophila exhibits behavioral sensitization in response to repeated exposure to cocaine; the exploitation of this genetically tractable model system for studying cocaine addiction is already providing new clues that may help understand the process of drug addiction in man.

The addictive drugs cocaine and amphetamine stimulate locomotion and provide behavioral reward. They have multiple molecular sites of action, of which those on sodiumand chloride-dependent neurotransmitter transporters are thought to be particularly important [1,2]. Both drugs bind to the plasma-membrane transporters for dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin, inhibiting reuptake into neurons o...

Drug addiction is a multileveled behavior controlled by interactions among many diverse neuronal groups involving several neurotransmitter systems. The involvement of brainstem-sourced, cholinergic neurotransmission in the development of addiction and in the persistent physiological processes that drive this maladaptive behavior has not been widely investigated. The major cholinergic input to n...

Although the voluntary intake of drugs of abuse is a behavior largely preserved throughout phylogeny, it is currently unclear whether pathological drug use ("addiction") can be observed in species other than humans. Here, we report that behaviors that resemble three of the essential diagnostic criteria for addiction appear over time in rats trained to self-administer cocaine. As in humans, this...