This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, brain science, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Cocaine use disorder represents a public health crisis with no FDA-approved medications for its treatment.”
Key finding: These findings suggest that gut bacteria, via their metabolites, are key regulators of drug-seeking behaviors, positioning the microbiome as a potential translational research target.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 02 Aug 2023 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, alcohol, nicotine, brain science. The source abstract begins by describing: “Preclinical and human studies indicate psilocybin may reduce perseverant maladaptive behaviors, including nicotine and alcohol seeking.”
Key finding: We conclude that psilocybin reduces heroin relapse and highlight IL-17a signaling as a potential downstream pathway of psilocybin that also reduces heroin seeking.
Molecular Psychiatry • 21 Oct 2024 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, cocaine, brain science, craving. The source abstract begins by describing: “We recently reported that a conditioned stimulus (CS) memory retrieval-extinction procedure decreases reinstatement of cocaine and heroin seeking in rats and heroin craving in humans.”
Key finding: The UCS memory retrieval-extinction procedure has superior relapse prevention characteristics than the CS memory retrieval-extinction procedure and could be a promising method for decreasing relapse in human addicts.
Nature Communications • 14 Jul 2015 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, dopamine, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Relapse represents a consistent clinical problem for individuals with substance use disorder.”
Key finding: These results suggest that DA contributes to incubated cocaine seeking but the emergence of this role reflects changes in postsynaptic responsiveness to DA rather than presynaptic alterations.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 19 Sept 2024 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, brain science, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Persistent susceptibility to cue-induced relapse is a cardinal feature of addiction.”
Key finding: Finally, using ex vivo whole-cell recordings from pyramidal neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex, we demonstrate that the disruption of DS-controlled cocaine seeking following infralimbic cortex microinjections of muscimol+baclofen is likely a result of suppression of synaptic transmission in the region via a presynaptic mechanism of action.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 23 Jun 2021 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, brain science, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Relapse to drug seeking can be caused by exposure to drug-associated cues, provoking drug craving even after prolonged abstinence.”
Key finding: Altogether, these results indicate that AMPK activity in the NAc core is critical for the cue-induced reinstatement of cocaine seeking, which may be mediated by mTORC1 and ERK1/2 signaling.
Scientific Reports • 21 Apr 2017 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, withdrawal, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Existing pharmacological treatment options for opioid use disorder (OUD) face challenges that limit their efficacy.”
Key finding: This review adopts a translational approach to achieve several aims: (1) to outline the fundamental theories of orexin system function and relate orexinergic dysfunction to the disordered motivation and withdrawal states that characterize OUD; (2) to provide an up-to-date evaluation of preclinical and clinical evidence bases supporting the efficacy of orexin receptor antagonism for the treatment of OUD; (3) to discuss key clinical considerations of repurposing DORAs for OUD treatment, including safety and side effects (i.e., respiratory depression, anhedonia, and risk for abuse); and (4) to highlight the ongoing clinical efforts to determine therapeutic efficacy and safety profiles of DORAs for use in OUD populations.
Translational Psychiatry • 24 Oct 2025 • Reviews
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, brain science, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “One of the greatest challenges in treating addiction is preventing relapse during abstinence.”
Key finding: Such work has the potential to identify new therapeutic targets and to further our understanding of experience-dependent plasticity in the adult brain under normal circumstances and in the context of addiction.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience • 06 May 2016 • Reviews
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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: “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 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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This article may help explain addiction science through research on alcohol, craving, relapse, mental health. The source abstract begins by describing: “Preclinical studies revealed contribution of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) to a variety of neuropsychiatric diseases including alcoholism, but development of NMDAR antagonists for therapeutic use has been a challenge, in part due to severe side…”
Key finding: Taken together, these results demonstrate the involvement of calpains in alcohol-seeking and relapse and present a rationale for a novel pharmacological intervention that may reduce craving and relapse with minimal side effects in alcohol-dependent patients.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 28 Jul 2015 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on alcohol, dopamine, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Preclinical studies support an important role of dopamine D3 receptors (DRD3s) in alcohol use disorder (AUD).”
Key finding: Furthermore, the finding that binding in the SN is associated with alcohol demand warrants further examination.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 04 Aug 2021 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, dopamine, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “In the classical incubation of drug craving rat model, drug seeking is assessed after homecage forced abstinence.”
Key finding: We propose the dopamine stabilizer (−)-OSU6162 may serve as an adjunct pharmacological treatment to prevent relapse in male opioid users.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 06 Jan 2020 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on methamphetamine, craving, relapse, mental health. The source abstract begins by describing: “Methamphetamine (METH) abuse is characterised by chronic relapse and anxiety, for which there are no effective pharmacotherapies.”
Key finding: Using a translatable addiction model, these findings demonstrate the therapeutic efficacy of chronic oxytocin after METH self-administration and supports the clinical utility of oxytocin for METH addiction in both sexes.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 12 Nov 2019 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on alcohol, nicotine, brain science, craving. The source abstract begins by describing: “Chronic alcohol use has important effects on the glutamate system.”
Key finding: These findings provide human evidence consistent with a robust preclinical literature supporting mGlu5 receptor drugs as pharmacotherapies for AUD.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 12 Sept 2020 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, withdrawal, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Cocaine-associated memories are persistent, but, on retrieval, become temporarily destabilized and vulnerable to disruptions, followed by reconsolidation.”
Key finding: Cocaine-generated silent synapses dictate the encoding, consolidation, retrieval-induced destabilization and reconsolidation of cocaine memories, and these syapses can be targeted to reduce drug seeking and relapse.
Nature Neuroscience • 02 Dec 2019 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on nicotine, brain science, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Nicotine dependence is a major predictor of relapse in people with Tobacco Use Disorder (TUD).”
Key finding: These results may inform therapeutic approaches, such as brain stimulation, which may elicit differential clinical outcomes (e.g., dependence, craving) depending on the insular subnetwork that is targeted.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 03 Mar 2023 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, craving, relapse, treatment. The source abstract begins by describing: “Cocaine addiction is characterized by high relapse rates associated with glutamate dysregulation, presenting significant challenges for long-term treatment.”
Key finding: A single NAC treatment combined with extinction training can produce lasting suppression of relapse, highlighting its therapeutic promise for addiction treatment.
Translational Psychiatry • 19 Mar 2026 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, brain science, craving, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Drug-associated contextual cues contribute to drug craving and relapse after abstinence, which is a major challenge to drug addiction treatment.”
Key finding: Our study suggests that inhibition of actin polymerization during drug memory reconsolidation may be a potential approach to prevent drug relapse.
Scientific Reports • 05 Nov 2015 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cocaine, craving, relapse, treatment. The source abstract begins by describing: “Relapse to drug use after abstinence is a major challenge in treating substance use disorder.”
Key finding: Thus, the beneficial effects of oral SMAASH-C treatment over abstinence following chronic cocaine self-administration appears to be sex-specific.
Translational Psychiatry • 27 May 2024 • Research
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