PSY407H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter N/A: Incentive Salience, The Incentive
Document Summary
The incentive sensitization theory of addiction: some current issues. Addiction is caused primarily by drug-induced sensitization in the brain mesocorticolimbic systems that attribute incentive salience to reward-associated stimuli. Addiction implies a pathological and compulsive pattern of drug-seeking and drug-taking behaviours, which occupies an inordinate amount of an individual"s time and thoughts, and persists despite adverse consequences. Drugs change the brain, and these changes persist past addiction and rehabilitation. The most important change in the brain would be a sensitization or hypersensitivity to the incentive motivational effects of drugs and drug-associated stimuli. Incentive sensitization produces a bias of attentional processing towards drug-associated stimuli and pathological motivation for drugs. Repeated exposure in susceptible individuals (and under certain circumstances), can persistently change brain circuits/cells that normally regulate attribution of incentive salience to stimuli. Leaves the brain circuits hypersensitive to drugs and their cues. Sensitive incentive salience can manifest implicitly (wanting) or explicitly (craving).
