Does using alcohol, nicotine, or cannabis engender addiction by changing the structure of brains, or does the structure of brains incline some people toward using those substances? In standard brain ...

One of the dominant ways of thinking about addiction is as a disease. While there is evidence for this approach, it often leads to a dismissal of addiction’s social causes, rooted in alienation and ...

Addiction often isn’t about chasing pleasure—it’s about escaping pain. Researchers at Scripps Research have discovered that a tiny brain region called the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) ...

Addiction is one of the most intensely studied conditions in modern medicine, yet even with high‑resolution brain scans and genetic tools, scientists still cannot fully explain why some people get ...

Remarkable scientific progress over the past five decades has helped us develop knowledge of how drugs of abuse induce pleasure, reinforce use, and lead to the compulsive self-administration we call ...

For the first time, researchers demonstrated in an animal how heavy alcohol use leads to long-term behavioral issues by damaging brain circuits critical for decision-making. Rats exposed to high ...

Matt Field receives research funding from the Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health Research, Alcohol Change UK, and the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling. He is a trustee of ...

The author overcame his dependence on pills and alcohol. Now he wants to beat back misconceptions about the science of addiction. “How should we think about addicts’ aims and agency?” This is the ...