Researchers have used mouse models to study how cocaine addiction alters the brain, illuminating why relapse is common as ...

Ramirez is an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University. When philosophers imagined the ship of Theseus, they asked: Can a vessel that has all its planks replaced ...

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 ...

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) ...

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 ...

Addiction is one of the most common and consequential chronic medical conditions in the United States. Nationwide, more than 46 million people met the criteria for a substance abuse disorder as of ...

Asheville, North Carolina — Katy Paige Rosenberg, a freshman at the University of North Carolina Asheville, recently realized what too much scrolling on her phone was doing to her. She estimates she ...

You reach for your phone the moment you wake up, scroll through social media while drinking coffee, check notifications during every spare moment, and fall asleep with your device in hand. This ...

Dopamine—a neurotransmitter responsible for influencing motivation, pleasure, mood and learning in the brain—has experienced a bit of fame in recent years, acting as a sort of buzzword to describe a ...

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 ...

For the first time, scientists have shown in animals how heavy alcohol use can cause long-lasting damage to brain circuits that control decision-making. The study, published in the journal Science ...