Concepts of motivation are vital to progress in behavioral neuroscience. Motivational
concepts help us to understand what limbic brain systems are chiefly evolved to do, ie, to …

Persistent changes in behavior and psychological function that occur as a function of
experience, such those associated with learning and memory, are thought to be due to the …

Regulation of gene expression is one mechanism by which drugs of abuse can induce
relatively long-lasting changes in the brain to cause a state of addiction. Here, we focus on …

Psychostimulant drugs like amphetamine are readily self-administered by humans and
laboratory animals by virtue of their actions on dopamine (DA) neurons in the midbrain …

Abstract The National Institute on Drug Abuse was founded in 1974, and since that time
there have been significant advances in understanding the processes by which drugs of …

ΔFosB is a unique transcription factor that plays an essential role in long-term adaptive
changes in the brain associated with diverse conditions, such as drug addiction, Parkinson's …

Addiction can be viewed as a form of drug-induced neural plasticity. One of the best-
established molecular mechanisms of addiction is upregulation of the cAMP second …

Considerable evidence suggests that neuroadaptations leading to addiction involve the
same glutamate-dependent cellular mechanisms that enable learning and memory. Long …

A series of studies has shown that neonatal excitotoxic disconnection of the rat ventral
hippocampus may serve as a heuristic model of schizophrenia. The model mimics a …

The involvement of neurotrophic factors in neuronal survival and differentiation is well
established. The more recent realization that these factors also play pivotal roles in the …