Research Library / Article Summary
VTA glutamatergic projections to the nucleus accumbens suppress psychostimulant-seeking behavior
Plain-English AddictionTube research summary with source link, DOI, key finding, and recovery relevance.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 26 Jun 2024 • Research
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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.
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 cocaine, dopamine, brain science, craving. The source abstract begins by describing: “The authors show that rostral ventral pallidum projections to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) are activated during cue-induced reinstatement of cocaine seeking, and DREADD inhibition of these projections blocks this behavior.”
Key finding: This double dissociation in ventral pallidum subregional roles in drug seeking is likely to be important for understanding the mesocorticolimbic circuits underlying reward seeking and addiction.
Nature Neuroscience • 02 Mar 2014 • Research
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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
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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 cocaine, dopamine, brain science, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Cocaine addiction is a significant medical and public concern.”
Key finding: These findings demonstrate that the endogenous ghrelin system plays an important role in cocaine-related addictive behaviors and suggest that manipulating and targeting this system may be viable for mitigating cocaine use disorder.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 18 Dec 2021 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, dopamine, brain science, craving. The source abstract begins by describing: “Cocaine has actions in the peripheral nervous system that reliably precede—and thus predict—its soon-to-follow central rewarding effects.”
Key finding: These findings suggest that the conditioned peripheral effects of cocaine can contribute significantly to cocaine-induced (but not stress-induced) cocaine craving, and also suggest the cocaine cue as an important target for cue-exposure therapies for cocaine addiction.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 27 Mar 2013 • Research
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