The cognitive neuroscience of addiction

Question 1

What percentage of alcohol users meet the criteria for alcohol use disorder?

Answer 1

6%

Question 2

What does cocaine reduce the volume of?

Answer 2

the inferior portion of the frontal lobe

Question 3

Heroin use is associated wiht a broad range of what?

Answer 3

neuropathologies

Question 4

What is alcoholism strongly linked to?

Answer 4

the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndome

Question 5

What is Wernicke encephalopathy

Answer 5

general brain shrinkage

Question 6

What is Korsakoff syndrome?

Answer 6

chronic “end stage” of brain shrinkage. It is a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by anterograde amnesia (inability to remember new things), which can sometimes be treated with thiamine supplements

Question 7

What is anterograde amnesia

Answer 7

inability to remember new things

Question 8

In cannabis. where was brain volume reduced in users?

Answer 8

in the hippocampus and the amygdala

Question 9

How much risk is there with heavy canabis use?

Answer 9

double the risk of psychotic symptoms

Question 10

What percentage of indiviudals who use drugs of abuse become addicted

Answer 10

10-20%

Question 11

WHat is the genetic contribution to addiction?

Answer 11

50%

Question 12

What are the 4 causal factors of drug addiction?

Answer 12

1. Effects of drug-related cues – cue reactivity
2. Effects of drug tolerance and withdrawal
3. The drugs’ influence on processing of rewards (pleasure and incentives (motivation)
4. Drug taking as self-medication in mental illness

Question 13

What is the instrumental conditioning paradigm>

Answer 13

the drug is the reinforcer which strengthens the associations between drug-related cues and drug use

Question 14

What is extensively documented in rehabilitation?

Answer 14

context-driven relapse

Question 15

What did Subkov and Zilov research

Answer 15

Conditioned compensatory response- dogs developing a tolerance to adrenaline

Question 16

What is conditioned compensatory response a form of?

Answer 16

classical (pavlovian) conditioning

Question 17

Where does Morphine suppress activity?

Answer 17

in the CNS

Question 18

What does repeated use of a drug lead to?

Answer 18

conditioned compensatory response

Question 19

When does alcohol have a stronger effect?

Answer 19

when it is consumed as part of exotic drinks and cocktails than when it is part of familiar drinks …because the change in taste reduces the conditioned compensatory response or with new people

Question 20

What is conditioned compensatory response a form of?

Answer 20

tolerance

Question 21

What is tolerance to alcohol based on?

Answer 21

the desensitisation of GABA receptors where alcohol is an agonist

Question 22

How does an organism prevent inhibition?

Answer 22

the organism compensates by reducing the sensitivity of GABA receptors in inhibitory synapses and by increasing activity in excitatory synapses

Question 23

Where does pleasure show increased activation?

Answer 23

basal ganglia, especially in the nucleus accumbens

Question 24

What is the anhedonia hypothesis?

Answer 24

dopaminergic synapses convey ‘goodness’ (e.g. in the above experiment, they conveyed to food its ‘goodness’)
• Dopamine antagonists such as pimozide reduce this effect, thus reducing the animal’s propensity to work for food

Question 25

What was found about rats pressing a lever for drugs?

Answer 25

• However, when the animals had to press the lever, only the healthy rats were willing to work for it, whereas the rats with impaired dopamine transmission were happy to settle for the less tasty food

Question 26

What is the incentive salience treatment?

Answer 26

that dopaminergic circuit involving NA and VTA is not so much responsible for the pleasure obtained from a drug, but for the motivation to obtain it

Question 27

What did McKee find?

Answer 27

Stress decreased the delay to initiate smoking in the abstinence incentive task