There is increasing interest among functional neurosurgeons in the potential for novel
therapies to impact upon diseases beyond movement disorders and pain. A target of …

Drug addiction is a chronically relapsing disorder that has been characterized by (1)
compulsion to seek and take the drug,(2) loss of control in limiting intake, and (3) emergence …

Long-term depression (LTD) in the CNS has been the subject of intense investigation as a
process that may be involved in learning and memory and in various pathological …

Many of the brain's reward systems converge on the nucleus accumbens, a region richly
innervated by excitatory, inhibitory, and modulatory afferents representing the circuitry …

The cellular heterogeneity of the brain confounds efforts to elucidate the biological
properties of distinct neuronal populations. Using bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) …

The publication of the psychomotor stimulant theory of addiction in 1987 and the finding that
addictive drugs increase dopamine concentrations in the rat mesolimbic system in 1988 …

Dopamine is involved in drug reinforcement but its role in addiction is less clear. Here we
describe PET imaging studies that investigate dopamine's involvement in drug abuse in the …

Using addictive drugs can evolve from controlled social use into the compulsive relapsing
disorder that characterizes addiction. This transition to addiction results from genetic …

Dysregulation of the brain emotional systems that mediate arousal and stress is a key
component of the pathophysiology of drug addiction. Drug addiction is a chronically …

Orexins (synonymous with hypocretins) are recently discovered neuropeptides made
exclusively in hypothalamus. Behavioral, anatomical, and neurophysiological studies show …