Neuron
Volume 69, Issue 4, 24 February 2011, Pages 599-602
Journal home page for Neuron

NeuroView
Addiction: Pulling at the Neural Threads of Social Behaviors

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2011.01.027Get rights and content
Under an Elsevier user license
open archive

Addiction coopts the brain's neuronal circuits necessary for insight, reward, motivation, and social behaviors. This functional overlap results in addicted individuals making poor choices despite awareness of the negative consequences; it explains why previously rewarding life situations and the threat of judicial punishment cannot stop drug taking and why a medical rather than a criminal approach is more effective in curtailing addiction.

Cited by (0)