Research Library / Article Summary
The protective effect of operant social reward on cocaine self-administration, choice, and relapse is dependent on delay and effort for the social reward
Plain-English AddictionTube research summary with source link, DOI, key finding, and recovery relevance.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 16 Aug 2021 • Research
opioidcocainemethamphetaminerelapsegeneticstreatmentanimal study
Research focus
This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, cocaine, methamphetamine, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Social reinforcement-based treatments are effective for many, but not all, people with addictions to drugs.”
Key finding: This choice procedure can identify mechanisms of individual differences in an animal model of cocaine use and could thereby help screen medications for people who are relatively unresponsive to treatments based on rewarding social interaction.
Why this may help: This may help explain why addiction can involve brain, behavior, mental health, craving, relapse, or treatment factors rather than simple willpower alone. It should be read as research information, not personal medical advice.
This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, cocaine, brain science, withdrawal. The source abstract begins by describing: “Persistent vulnerability to drug-seeking is driven by enduring synaptic adaptations, yet current μ-opioid receptor-targeting pharmacotherapies provide limited efficacy against these neuroadaptations.”
Key finding: By targeting a pathway independent of classical opioid receptor signaling, CA4 inhibition represents a mechanistically distinct strategy that may reduce relapse vulnerability in OUD.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 21 Jan 2026 • Research
opioidcocainebrain sciencewithdrawalrelapsetreatment
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, methamphetamine, dopamine, brain science. The source abstract begins by describing: “Converging evidence indicates that both dopamine and glutamate neurotransmission within the nucleus accumbens (NAc) play a role in psychostimulant self-administration and relapse in rodent models.”
Key finding: These findings indicate that in contrast to the well-recognized mesoaccumbal dopamine system that is critical to psychostimulant reward and relapse, there is a parallel mesoaccumbal glutamatergic system that suppresses reward and psychostimulant-seeking behavior.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 26 Jun 2024 • Research
cocainemethamphetaminedopaminebrain sciencerelapsegenetics
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, cocaine, dopamine, brain science. The source abstract begins by describing: “Persistent transcriptional events in ventral tegmental area (VTA) and other reward relevant brain regions contribute to enduring behavioral adaptations that characterize substance use disorder.”
Key finding: These findings establish an essential role for H3Q5dop, and its downstream transcriptional consequences, in heroin-induced functional plasticity in VTA.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 29 Jan 2022 • Research
opioidcocainedopaminebrain sciencerelapsegenetics
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, cocaine, methamphetamine, dopamine. The source abstract begins by describing: “Methamphetamine (METH) is a widely abused psychostimulant, whose hyper-rewarding property is believed to underlie its addictive effect, but the molecular mechanism regulating this effect remains unclear.”
Key finding: Our findings demonstrate an important role for NAc novel-m009C in regulating METH reward, reveal a novel molecular regulator of the actions of METH on brain reward circuitries and provide a new strategy for treating METH addiction based on the modulation of small non-coding RNAs.
Molecular Psychiatry • 17 Jun 2022 • Research
opioidcocainemethamphetaminedopaminebrain sciencegenetics
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, cocaine, brain science, withdrawal. The source abstract begins by describing: “Evidence indicates that the anterior (aIC), but not posterior (pIC), insular cortex promotes cued reinstatement of cocaine seeking after extinction in rats.”
Key finding: Moreover, the incubation of craving results suggest that new contingency learning is necessary to recruit the aIC in cued heroin seeking.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 18 Mar 2024 • Research
opioidcocainebrain sciencewithdrawalcravingrelapse
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