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Addiction involves changes in the brain that make it extremely difficult to fight the impulse for just one more drink or one more hit. Recent research sheds some more light on just what kinds of changes cocaine can cause in the synapses of brain areas associated with reward.
Read MoreIn this issue of Ask a Neuroscientist, Dr. Talia Lerner fields a question about the exact relationship between dopamine and addiction. Writing in response to a question from Peter Senavallis, Talia says: "the dopamine hypothesis of drug addiction ... has been a driving force in addiction research ever since people noticed that addictive drugs all seem to act in one way or another on dopamine regulation." However, she notes (and describes) recent research that "calls into question the idea that dopamine neuron stimulation would be sufficient to induce and sustain all the classic hallmarks of addiction, both behavioral and molecular. "
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