What evidence suggests that there is a neural basis for addiction and reward? How might this be related to the motivation to engage in survival behaviors such as eating or sexual behavior?
What will be an ideal response?
The mesolimbic pathway has been highlighted as critical to rewarding effects for both drugs of abuse and other natural rewards such as food, water, and sex. Those natural rewards and drugs of abuse result in increased dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, which is part of the mesolimbic pathway. Humans with the greatest increases in dopamine in the nucleus accumbens following drug use also experience the most intense drug effects, showing a correlation between brain activity and subjective experience. In addition, blocking dopamine also blocks the rewarding effects of ESB, and lesioning the nucleus accumbens results in lowered reward effects to many drugs, suggesting that dopamine produces the positive feelings coming from natural and drug rewards. The mesolimbocortical system, which includes the nucleus accumbens, the ventral tegmental area, and parts of the cortex, also changes in response to drug use. Specifically, baseline dopamine levels drop so that natural rewards are less effective at producing positive effects, while drugs and associated cues result in enhanced dopamine transmission that can last well past the time when someone has used a drug of abuse. In addition, hypofrontality makes drug users impulsive and impairs decision making, which encourages them to use drugs again. Since the mesolimbocortical system and dopamine are critical to responses to both natural and drug rewards, it seems likely that drugs of abuse take advantage of neural systems that evolved to support survival behaviors such as eating or sexual behaviors. Some of the gene locations linked to caffeine addiction regulate activity of glutamate and serotonin. Alleles of the CHRNA5 acetylcholine receptor gene and the opioid receptor gene OPRMI are associated with risks for becoming addicted to smoking and alcohol, respectively.
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