Stimulants are a class of drugs that act on the central nervous system, increasing alertness, energy, and attention while elevating mood. They achieve these effects by enhancing the activity of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain.

Many stimulant-related hazards are linked to intensive, high-dose, or long-term usage. The mode of administration plays a significant moderating role; injecting stimulants and smoking crack cocaine or methamphetamine have been specifically associated with more problematic use behaviours. Even people who use stimulants sporadically or...

In ISAM-NIG's new monthly talk series "In Love with Addiction Neuroscience”, addiction neuroscientists from across the world share their personal stories/experiences on the beauty of addiction neuroscience and how/why they have decided to invest their scientific life in this field.

Webinar 1- Prof Kathleen Brady 

Webinar 2- Dr. Marc Potenza

Webinar 3- Dr. Sylvia Cruz 

Webinar 4- Dr. Antonio Verdejo-Garcia

Webinar 5- Dr. Alex Baldacchino

Webinar 6- Dr. Jean-Lud Cadet

Webinar 7- Dr. Judson Brewer

Webinar 8- Dr. Rita Goldstein

Webinar 9- Dr. Hamed Ekhtiari

Here, you can find a series of webinar recordings put together by ISAM Neuroscience Interest Group in collaboration with ENIGMA Addiction Working Group.

Webinar 1: International Network on Neuroscience for Addiction Medicine

Webinar 2: Cognitive Training/Rehabilitation Interventions for Addiction Medicine

Webinar 3: Biomarkers for Addiction Treatment Development

Purpose of Review

Alcohol and cannabis are the most commonly used substances during adolescence and are typically initiated during this sensitive neurodevelopmental period.

The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the most recent literature focused on understanding how these substances affect the developing brain.

Findings

The effects of alcohol use include:

• widespread decreases in gray matter volume and cortical thickness across time
• slowed white matter growth and poorer integrity
• disrupted network efficiency
• poorer impulse and attentional control, learning, memory...

Neuroscience and addiction research advances have been important for understanding the neurobiological changes that occur when a person transitions from recreational substance use to a substance use disorder or addiction. Addiction neurobiology is superbly situated to benefit from numerous developments in neuroscience.

Abstract

The ventral striatum (VS) is considered a key region that flexibly updates recent changes in reward values for habit learning. However, this update process may not serve to maintain learned habitual behaviours, which are insensitive to value changes. Here, using fMRI in humans and single-unit electrophysiology in macaque monkeys we report another role of the primate VS: that the value memory subserving habitual seeking is stably maintained in the VS. Days after object-value associative learning, human and monkey VS continue to show increased responses to previously rewarded objects...