Understanding the Reward Response and Addiction
We try to untangle conflicting studies about the brain’s reward response system and addictive or compulsive behaviors.
New Study Shows Correlation Between Brain Scans and Subsequent Addiction
A longitudinal brain study of children shows a correlation between low caudate nucleus reward response and gaming addiction.
How Alcohol Use Disorder Affects the Brain
Researchers from China are able to identify alcohol use disorder from brain scans with 99% accuracy.
Brain Scans of Patients in Withdrawal Reveal Little
A review of fMRIs of people in withdrawal from substance use disorders concludes there’s no shared neural mechanism.
Urge Suppression: The Relationship Between Impulsivity and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Alcohol Use Disorder
Two studies, one from the U.S. involving brain scans plus a systematic review from France look at urge suppression, impulsivity, alcohol use disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Public Policy and America’s Opioid Epidemic
Two leading neuroscience researchers from Mount Sinai lay out their public policy recommendations for managing the opioid epidemic.