Drug Addiction: Neuroimaging

Addiction is a chronic disease process that develops in susceptible individuals upon repeated consumption of drugs of abuse. Neuroimaging technology has allowed an. in vivo view into the addicted human brain. This view expanded as functional neuroimaging research began to facilitate the modeling of complex behavioral and psychological phenomena into a temporally dynamic web of an interconnected neural circuitry. Here, we provide a review of drug addiction, highlighting the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie its core behavioral characteristics as revealed by imaging studies. Visualizing the structural, neurochemical, and functional impairments in the brains of drug-addicted individuals and integrating results with measures of behavior, cognition, and emotion offers an opportunity for an in-depth mechanistic understanding of human drug addiction. Such understanding is crucial for designing therapeutic and preventive behavioral and psychopharmacological interventions.