Special Issue "Addiction and Neuroadaptation"
A special issue of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2015) | Viewed by 195757
Special Issue Editor
Interests: functional MRI; network analysis; drug use disorders; animal models
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
One of the defining features of drug addiction is the high rate of relapse to drug seeking and taking even after prolonged abstinence periods. Regressing towards drug intake in spite of the negative consequences, and the inability to control intake, strongly suggests that the brain undergoes enduring and perhaps permanent neurobiological changes that need to be fully understood before effective treatments are established. Advancements in our knowledge of the biological underpinnings of addictive disorders have greatly increased over the past decade. Animal studies modeling distinct phases such as sustained drug intake, withdrawal, extinction and relapse are instrumental to gaining insight on neurobiological mechanisms. This has been accompanied by conceptual shifts in our understanding of the control of gene expression, discoveries of the synaptic and molecular events involved in long-term plasticity and memory, and developments of translational neuroimaging tools that provide a global view of brain activity and brain structural changes. This special issue will bring together original research and review articles on the neural correlates of addiction, primarily focused on ‘neuroadaptive mechanisms’ and how these brain changes may impact behavior even after protracted abstinence. More studies using specialized techniques to probe in vivo brain activity, unique animal models to correlate neural substrates and behavior, and articles introducing novel concepts and discoveries are needed to further expand the breadth of our current knowledge of this disease impacting society on a global scale.
Dr. Marcelo Febo
Guest Editor
Keywords
- addiction
- drug
- reward
- drug abuse
- animal models
- neuroimaging
- reinforcer
- conditioning
- memory
- plasticity
- gene expression
- molecular
- neuroadaptations