Addiction and Brain Circuits | The Society for Neuroscience Explains
Addiction and brain circuits and the impacts of mind-altering substances on the brain – just one of the BrainFacts from BrainFacts.org.
The Society for Neuroscience has joined forces with The Kavli Foundation and GATSBY to create “a public information initiative,” BrainFacts.org. To give you an idea of its website’s contents, the navigation tabs are: About Neuroscience, Brain Basics, Sensing|Thinking&Behaving, Disease & Disorders, Across the Lifespan and In Society. As you can see – a wealth of information and resources!
In this post, I am linking to their BrainFact titled, “Addiction and Brain Circuits.” To grab your interest, I’ve copied and pasted the opening to this particular BrainFact below:
Humans have always struggled with addictions to mind-altering substances. Yet, only in the past few decades have neuroscientists begun to understand precisely how these substances affect the brain — and why they can quickly become a destructive and even deadly habit.
For a long time, society viewed addiction as a moral failing. The addict was seen as someone who simply lacked self-control. Today, thanks to new advances in brain imaging and other technologies, we know that addiction is a disease characterized by profound disruptions in particular routes — or circuits — in the brain.
Scientists are learning how genetics and environmental factors, such as stress, contribute to these neural disruptions and increase the risk of addiction. This ongoing research is allowing researchers to:
- Understand how addictive substances affect the brain’s reward system.
- Develop more effective therapies for treating drug abuse and addiction.
- Establish better methods of detecting people at risk of developing addictions.
To read the rest of this BrainFact, click here.
You may also find this BrainFact of interest as well:
Neurotransmitters: How Brain Cells Use Chemicals to Communicate | May
Whether it is learning a new fact or deciding which way to move, tasks executed by our brains rely on the smooth and efficient release of neurotransmitters, chemicals that send messages from one brain cell to another. Research has unlocked the molecular and cellular mysteries of this complex process — discoveries that one day may help treat some of the most severe and deadly diseases of the brain.
Lisa Frederiksen
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