Nucleus Accumbens And Cognitive Mechanisms Of Addiction

Background and Aim : Understanding the brain circuitry that underlies reward is critical to improve treatment for many common health issues, including obesity, depression, and addiction. The Nucleus Accumbens is a major site that mediating reward behavior, and it is thought to be directly involved in reinforcing and addictive behaviors in response to drug use. It is contained within the ventral striatum and part of the mesolimbic system and receives dopaminergic projections from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in the brainstem. Release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens is critical for enhancing the pleasure or positive reinforcement of both natural rewards such as food or sex, as well as substances of abuse such as alcohol and cocaine. this review seeks to summarize current understanding of drug-related behaviors to postulation that increased knowledge of the plasticity within the drug reward circuit will lead to new and improved treatments for addiction.Methods : This article attempts to synthesize the existing literature on cognitive processes involved in the addiction reward system. For this purpose, articles published between 2013 and 2019 were selected manually and computerized using the sites Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar and PsycINFO.Results : The Nucleus Accumbens appears to play a central role in targeted behavior to determine addiction and addictive behavior, such as craving, stimuli-driven drug seeking, and a high propensity for relapse following abstinence. The Accumbens have a primary connective pattern similar to the dorsal striatum, whereby it receives dense dopaminergic input from the ventral mesencephalon and glutamatergic input from cortical, allocortical, and thalamic brain regions and sends GABAergic projections that do not leave the basal ganglia. The overall topography of cortical and allocortical input makes the NAc as the primary striatal portal for limbic and appetitive input, and is in critical position to regulate motivated behavior.Conclusion : The results of this review article suggest that the reward system and the associated with other brain regions play an important role in the types of addiction. Further identification of the cognitive and non-cognitive factors involved in addiction can lead to newer strategies for treatment.

کلیدواژه ها:

Addiction ، nucleus accumbens ، addictive behavior. drug reward circuit