Abstract
Drug addiction continues to exact enormous human and financial costs on society, at a time when available treatments remain inadequately effective for most people. Given that advances in treating other medical disorders have resulted directly from research of the molecular and cellular pathophysiology of the disease process, an improved understanding of the basic neurobiol-ogy of addiction should likewise translate into more efficacious treatments. This chapter reviews our knowledge of circuits in the brain that mediate addiction and the changes in these circuits, induced by drugs of abuse at the molecular level, which represent the pathophysiology of addiction.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Principles of Molecular Medicine |
| Publisher | Humana Press |
| Pages | 1220-1227 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781588292025 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2006 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Brain reward regions
- CREB (cAMP response element binding protein)
- cAMP
- cocaine
- dopamine
- drug addiction
- drugs of abuse
- gene expression
- nucleus accumbens
- opiates
- transcription factors
- ventral tegmental area
- δFosB