ReviewKicking the habit: The neural basis of ingrained behaviors in cocaine addiction
Section snippets
The role of ingrained behaviors in cocaine addiction
The development of habitual behaviors requires repetition. It is interesting to note that the illicit drugs with the highest risk of addiction are those that have shorter half-lives (O’Brien, 2001). For example, although cocaine- and amphetamine-like psychostimulants are all highly addictive, the risk of addiction for cocaine is substantially higher than other psychostimulants (O’Brien, 2001). Whereas psychostimulants have similar mechanisms of action in that they all increase extracellular
Neuronal plasticity underlying the habitual component of cocaine addiction
It is hypothesized that cocaine-induced plasticity in circuits including the ventral (i.e. nucleus accumbens) and dorsal striatum underlies the goal-directed and habitual components of drug seeking behavior, respectively. Both the ventral and dorsal striatum are influenced by topographically organized glutamatergic inputs from the cortex and dopaminergic afferents from the ventral midbrain (Alexander et al., 1990, Heimer et al., 1997, Porrino et al., 2004a, Schmidt et al., 2005, Voorn et al.,
Pathways underlying the flow of information from ventral-to-dorsal striatum
The evidence described above indicates that functional changes occur in the ventral striatum that spread progressively more dorsal and lateral over the course of prolonged cocaine use. To understand the mechanisms underlying these phenomena, it is important to note that there is substantial anatomical evidence that the neuronal circuits including ventral and dorsal subregions of the striatum are interconnected and process information via parallel as well as integrated feedforward connections (
Role of the dorsolateral striatum in cocaine seeking
Above, we have reviewed evidence that prolonged cocaine use causes functional changes in the striatum that progress from ventromedial-to-dorsolateral regions. The role of the ventromedial striatum in goal-directed aspects of cocaine seeking and taking is well established (Carlezon and Wise, 1996, Chevrette et al., 2002, Ikemoto, 2003, Ito et al., 2004, Rodd-Henricks et al., 2002; for a review see Pierce and Kumaresan, 2006), and results from recent behavioral studies indicate that changes in
Concluding remarks, caveats and remaining issues
The evidence reviewed above is consistent with the notion that repeated exposure to cocaine and repetition of all of the behaviors associated with drug seeking and taking result in the modification of neuronal transmission in the limbic system and basal ganglia, among other areas, producing increasingly ingrained sets of behavioral sequences. These habitual behaviors can be activated by drug-associated stimuli and contribute significantly to the process whereby the motivation (or craving) to
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