This article may help explain addiction science through research on dopamine, brain science. The source abstract begins by describing: “Neurodevelopmental models implicate dopaminergic and neurocognitive maturation in adolescent risk-taking, yet their joint contribution to substance use trajectories in humans remains unclear.”
Key finding: Neurodevelopmental differences in brain iron, impulsivity, and cognitive control are associated with distinct longitudinal patterns of substance use in youth, highlighting adolescence as a key window for risk stratification.
Nature Communications • 11 Jun 2026 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on alcohol, brain science, genetics. The source abstract begins by describing: “Increases in impulsivity and negative affect (e.g., neuroticism) are common during adolescence and are both associated with risk for alcohol-use initiation and other risk behaviors.”
Key finding: Consistent with current equifinality-based conceptions of development, few connections predicted both impulsivity and neuroticism, indicating that the neural signatures of these two traits are relatively distinct despite both being implicated in alcohol-use risk and a wide array of behaviors.
Molecular Psychiatry • 05 Sept 2025 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cannabis, brain science, treatment, review. The source abstract begins by describing: “Cannabis use peaks in adolescence, and adolescents may be more vulnerable to the neural effects of cannabis and cannabis-related harms due to ongoing brain development during this period.”
Key finding: Guidelines for conducting this work are provided.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 27 Nov 2021 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on nicotine, brain science, genetics, treatment. The source abstract begins by describing: “Smoking of cigarettes among young adolescents is a pressing public health issue.”
Key finding: Taken together, our findings reveal vmPFC GMV as a possible biomarker for the early stages of nicotine addiction, with implications for its prevention and treatment.
Nature Communications • 15 Aug 2023 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cannabis, brain science. The source abstract begins by describing: “Frequent cannabis use during adolescence has been associated with alterations in brain structure.”
Key finding: Detailed studies of vulnerability to structural brain alterations and longitudinal studies examining long-term risk are clearly indicated.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 19 Feb 2019 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, review. The source abstract begins by describing: “Significant breakthroughs in the field of injury prevention and childhood safety have occurred during the past half-century.”
Key finding: Focused efforts to reduce unintentional injuries from opiate overdoses, firearms and motor vehicle crashes may produce a breakthrough in the field of injury prevention similar to that of the Poison Prevention Packaging Act.
Pediatric Research • 27 Sept 2016 • Reviews
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cannabis, brain science, genetics, mental health. The source abstract begins by describing: “There have been dramatic changes worldwide in the attitudes toward and consumption of recreational and medical cannabis.”
Key finding: Here Ferland and Hurd discuss risk factors related to the development of CUD its neurobiological characteristics.
Nature Neuroscience • 06 Apr 2020 • Reviews
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on alcohol, cannabis, nicotine, dopamine. The source abstract begins by describing: “Approximately 10–20% of U.S.”
Key finding: Measuring 1/nT2* offers an innovative, non-invasive method to index neurobiological alterations in adolescent CU.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 02 Jun 2026 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on methamphetamine, brain science, relapse, mental health. The source abstract begins by describing: “Early life stress (ELS) is associated with perturbed neural development and augmented vulnerability to mental health disorders, including addiction.”
Key finding: Adolescent oxytocin treatment reverses some of the ELS effects on later-life psychopathology and vulnerability to addiction.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 17 May 2022 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on alcohol, brain science, withdrawal, mental health. The source abstract begins by describing: “Binge drinking is a significant problem in adolescent populations, and because of the reciprocal interactions between ethanol (EtOH) consumption and the endocannabinoid (eCB) system, we sought to determine if adolescent EtOH intake altered the localization…”
Key finding: These findings indicate that repeated exposure to EtOH during adolescence leads to long-term deficits in CB1 receptor expression, eCB-eLTD, and reduced recognition memory, but that these functional deficits can be restored by treatments that increase endogenous 2-arachidonoylglycerol.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 30 Sept 2019 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, alcohol, cocaine, cannabis. The source abstract begins by describing: “Mitchell O, Caudy MS.”
Neuropsychopharmacology • 17 Aug 2021 • Reviews
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on alcohol, cannabis, nicotine, mental health. The source abstract begins by describing: “Background Cannabis use disorder (CUD) affects up to 1 in 5 people who try cannabis.”
Key finding: Results Here we show that adolescent age (odds ratio = 3.26, p p Conclusions CUD prevention and treatment should be targeted towards adolescents, who have a significantly greater risk of CUD than young adults.
Communications Medicine • 19 Jul 2025 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on alcohol, cannabis, brain science, genetics. The source abstract begins by describing: “There is an accumulation of evidence linking adolescent cannabis use with variations in brain structure and function, however it remains poorly understood whether cannabis-associated variations in brain structure represent pre-existing risk factors or…”
Key finding: These results highlight the importance of longitudinal analyses using multi-level modelling to disaggregate potential risk factors from potential consequences of substance use.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 13 Nov 2025 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cannabis, brain science, genetics, treatment. The source abstract begins by describing: “During adolescence, frequent and heavy cannabis use can lead to serious adverse health effects and cannabis use disorder (CUD).”
Key finding: Our study provides novel insights into disease mechanisms regulated by adolescent exposure to THC in a sex- and brain region-specific manner.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 22 Aug 2022 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on dopamine, brain science, genetics, mental health. The source abstract begins by describing: “The neurobiological traits that confer risk for addictions remain poorly understood.”
Key finding: Together, the results suggest that altered DA 2/3 R availability in terminal extra-striatal and dopamine cell body regions might constitute biological vulnerability traits, generating an EXT trajectory for addictions with and without co-occurring alterations in punishment sensitivity (i.e., an internalizing feature).
Neuropsychopharmacology • 07 Apr 2020 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on methamphetamine, brain science, genetics, mental health. The source abstract begins by describing: “The adolescent brain, characterized by its high plasticity, is particularly vulnerable to substance abuse, leading to long-term impacts on brain function and behavior.”
Key finding: These findings suggest that the detrimental effects of adolescent METH exposure extend into adulthood, emphasizing the delayed-onset impact of early exposure to psychostimulants.
Translational Psychiatry • 06 Oct 2025 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on opioid, alcohol, cannabis, treatment. The source abstract begins by describing: “Substance use disorders (SUDs) among adolescents and young adults aged 10–24 years represent a major global public health challenge, contributing to various medical conditions and significant disease burden.”
Key finding: Urgent implementation of targeted prevention and treatment strategies is critical to mitigate the impact of SUDs in this vulnerable population.
Scientific Reports • 17 Jul 2025 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on alcohol, brain science, genetics, treatment. The source abstract begins by describing: “Alcohol use during adolescence poses a significant public health problem due to its potential long-term consequences on both physical and mental health and increased risk for developing substance use disorders later in life.”
Key finding: These findings highlight both potential etiological pathways driving early alcohol use as well as phenotypic and environmental process that can be targeted for early intervention efforts.
Translational Psychiatry • 05 Jul 2025 • Research
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on brain science, review. The source abstract begins by describing: “Crone and Dahl review functional imaging studies of cognitive, affective and social processing in adolescents.”
Key finding: These changes in social–affective processing also may confer some adaptive advantages, such as greater flexibility in adjusting one's intrinsic motivations and goal priorities amidst changing social contexts in adolescence.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience • 20 Aug 2012 • Reviews
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This article may help explain addiction science through research on cannabis, brain science, treatment. The source abstract begins by describing: “Increased cannabis availability has contributed to increased use with concomitant incidence of adverse effects.”
Key finding: Thus, at doses that produce comparable ratings of intoxication, adolescents may exhibit greater cognitive impairment and alterations in brain function.
Neuropsychopharmacology • 02 Feb 2022 • Research
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