NESC 3237 Lecture Notes - Opponent Process, Incentive Salience, Mesolimbic Pathway
Document Summary
Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviours. Addiction is characterized by inability to consistently abstain on slide. Condition based-models: opponent-process model of addiction. Whenever you engage in a process (take heroin) you body produces a subsequent action to bring your body back to a normal level. You get this rebound effect where you go below normal, kinda like an undershoot, and eventually return to normal. A is the high you get from the drug. B is the subsequent action produced by your body. However this does get bigger the more you use it, so over time your withdrawal gets stronger. Cognitive models: basic principles of this is that you have cravings and urges. Positive affective urge network becomes more powerful over repeated use.