This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, dopamine, brain science, withdrawal. The source abstract begins by describing: “Opioid abuse is a rapidly growing public health crisis in the USA.”
Key finding: Low-mGluR2 expression in the brain may therefore be a risk factor for the initial development of opioid abuse and addiction.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 03 Oct 2018 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, relapse, treatment, animal study. The source abstract begins by describing: “Ibogaine and its main metabolite noribogaine provide important molecular prototypes for markedly different treatment of substance use disorders and co-morbid mental health illnesses.”
Key finding: As such, oxa-iboga compounds represent mechanistically distinct iboga analogs with therapeutic potential.
Nature Communications • 20 Sept 2024 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, treatment, animal study. The source abstract begins by describing: “The abuse of prescription opioids that are used for the treatment of chronic pain is a major public health concern, costing ∼$53.4 billion annually in lost wages, health-care costs, and criminal costs.”
Key finding: The use of extended access models of prescription opioid intake will help better understand the biological factors that underlie opioid dependence.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 25 Jul 2014 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, treatment. The source abstract begins by describing: “Opioid overdoses and opioid use disorder (OUD) are major public health concerns.”
Key finding: Overall, these findings establish Qβ-VLP conjugated vaccines for heroin and fentanyl as promising opioid vaccine candidates.
npj Vaccines • 28 Mar 2025 • Research
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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: “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
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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
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, brain science, withdrawal, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a chronic relapsing disorder that is a major burden for the lives of affected individuals, and society as a whole.”
Key finding: Altogether, these animal models will contribute to study behavioural and neuronal circuitries involved in the several negative affective signs characterizing OUD.
Scientific Reports • 29 Apr 2024 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, dopamine, brain science, withdrawal. The source abstract begins by describing: “The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is implicated in many pathologies, including depression, anxiety, substance-use disorders, and pain.”
Key finding: This commonality potentially suggests that the ACC is a locus for multiple withdrawal symptoms.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 02 Aug 2021 • Research
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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: “Cocaine and morphine produce similar addiction-related behaviors, but different adaptations at accumbens synapses.”
Key finding: Thus, these cell type–specific, opposing mechanisms produced the same net shift of the balance between excitatory inputs to D1- and D2-type NAc neurons, which may underlie certain common alterations in NAc-based behaviors induced by both classes of drugs.
Nature Neuroscience • 30 May 2016 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, dopamine, brain science, withdrawal. The source abstract begins by describing: “μ-opioid receptor (MOR) was previously shown to be necessary for opiate reward, analgesia and dependence.”
Key finding: Our study demonstrates that a subpopulation of striatal direct-pathway neurons is sufficient to support opiate reward-driven behaviors and provides a new intersectional genetic approach to dissecting neurocircuit-specific gene function in vivo.
Nature Neuroscience • 12 Jan 2014 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, brain science, withdrawal, treatment. The source abstract begins by describing: “Both CB1 receptor antagonism and agonism, in particular by 2-arachidonyl glycerol (2-AG), have been shown to reduce somatic symptoms of morphine withdrawal (MWD).”
Key finding: These findings reveal the respective sites of action of systemically administered MJN110 and AM251 in regulating the aversive effects of MWD.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 09 Dec 2015 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, dopamine, brain science, withdrawal. The source abstract begins by describing: “The effectiveness of current treatments for opioid use disorder (OUD) varies by sex.”
Key finding: The sex differences highlight the mechanistic distinctions between males and females that can be targeted when designing and implementing treatments for OUD.
Scientific Reports • 25 May 2023 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, dopamine, brain science, withdrawal. The source abstract begins by describing: “Drug-evoked adaptations in the mesolimbic dopamine system are postulated to drive opioid abuse and addiction.”
Key finding: Maintaining continuity of chronic opioid administration may, therefore, represent a strategy to minimize iatrogenic effects on brain reward circuits.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 20 Feb 2020 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, dopamine, brain science, withdrawal. The source abstract begins by describing: “Severe withdrawal symptoms triggered by cessation of long-term opioid use deter many individuals from seeking treatment.”
Key finding: The anti-hypodopaminergic effects of l -tetrahydropalmatine may be related to antagonism of the dopamine autoreceptor, thus constituting a plausible mechanism contributing to the effectiveness of Heantos-4 in facilitating opioid detoxification.
Scientific Reports • 04 Dec 2020 • Research
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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: “Substance use disorders (SUDs) induce widespread molecular dysregulation in nucleus accumbens (NAc), a brain region pivotal for coordinating motivation and reward, which is linked to neural and behavioral disturbances promoting addiction.”
Key finding: Our findings, and future work leveraging this dataset, will open avenues for the development of targeted therapeutic interventions, addressing the urgent need for more effective treatments for SUDs.
Molecular Psychiatry • 05 Apr 2025 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, brain science, withdrawal, genetics. The source abstract begins by describing: “The development of physical dependence and addiction disorders due to misuse of opioid analgesics is a major concern with pain therapeutics.”
Key finding: A novel HDAC1/HDAC2 inhibitor reduced behavioral manifestations of oxycodone withdrawal.
Nature Neuroscience • 08 Jun 2023 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, brain science, withdrawal, genetics. The source abstract begins by describing: “The lateral habenula encodes aversive stimuli contributing to negative emotional states during drug withdrawal.”
Key finding: The authors show that decreased synaptic efficacy onto raphe-projecting lateral habenula neurons supports opiate withdrawal-induced sociability deficits, and they demonstrate a role for TNF-α signaling in this process.
Nature Neuroscience • 17 Jun 2019 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, brain science, withdrawal, genetics. The source abstract begins by describing: “DNA cytosine methylation has been documented as a potential epigenetic mechanism of transcriptional regulation underlying opioid use disorder.”
Key finding: Taken together, these studies provide a foundational link between the regulation of tRNA cytosine methylation and opioid reward and highlight the tRNA machinery as a potential therapeutic target in addiction.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 08 Feb 2024 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, brain science, genetics, mental health. The source abstract begins by describing: “Fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid used extensively in humans for general anesthesia and analgesia.”
Key finding: Together, these data suggest that fentanyl-induced respiratory depression triggers brain hypoxia and subsequent hyperglycemia, both of which precede slower changes in brain temperature and metabolic brain activity.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 29 Aug 2017 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, brain science, withdrawal, relapse. The source abstract begins by describing: “Aversion refers to feelings of strong dislike or avoidance toward particular stimuli or situations.”
Key finding: Collectively, inhibition of the AKAP150/p-TRPV1 pathway in GABAergic neurons in the vlPAG may be considered a potential therapeutic target for the CPA response.
Communications Biology • 17 Jul 2023 • Research
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