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News tagged with addictions

Smoking is dumb: Researcher finds link between cigarette smoking and IQ

"Only dopes use dope," goes the memorable warning about drugs. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher cautions that the same goes for cigarettes.

Medicine & Health / Health

created Apr 01, 2010 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (23) | comments 29 | with audio podcast

Scientists reveal key mechanism governing nicotine addiction

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified a pathway in the brain that regulates an individual's vulnerability to the addictive properties of nicotine. The findings suggest a new ...

Medicine & Health / Medical research

created Jan 30, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (17) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Excessive Internet use is linked to depression

People who spend a lot of time browsing the net are more likely to show depressive symptoms, according to the first large-scale study of its kind in the West by University of Leeds psychologists.

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Feb 03, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (10) | comments 11 | with audio podcast

Compulsive eating shares addictive biochemical mechanism with cocaine, heroin abuse: study

In a newly published study, scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that the same molecular mechanisms that drive people into drug addiction are behind the compulsion to overeat, pushing ...

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Mar 28, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (10) | comments 6 | with audio podcast

Dopamine enhances expectation of pleasure in humans

(PhysOrg.com) -- Enhancing the effects of the brain chemical dopamine influences how people make life choices by affecting expectations of pleasure, according to new research from the UCL Institute of Neurology.

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Nov 12, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (10) | comments 0

Specific brain areas for sex, money

A team of French researchers headed by Jean-Claude Dreher of the Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive in Lyon, France, has provided the first evidence that the orbitofrontal cortex (located in the anterior ventral ...

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Oct 01, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (8) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Scientists create vaccine against heroin high

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have developed a highly successful vaccine against a heroin high and have proven its therapeutic potential in animal models.

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Jul 20, 2011 | popularity 4 / 5 (9) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

Desire and dread: Brain's computer has separate keyboard to control powerful emotions

(PhysOrg.com) -- Controlling powerful emotional reactions is often difficult because the brain's computer has a separate "keyboard" that controls feelings within extreme emotions like desire and dread, according to University ...

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Jun 30, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (7) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Scientists seek to manage dopamine's good and bad sides

The good, the bad and the ugly: That's a quick summary of the effects of dopamine, a natural brain chemical that's linked to pleasure, addiction and disease.

Medicine & Health / Medical research

created Oct 07, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 0

Study overturns decade-old findings in neurobiology

In findings that should finally put to rest a decade of controversy in the field of neurobiology, a team at The Scripps Research Institute has found decisive evidence that a specific neurotransmitter system -- the endocannabinoid ...

Medicine & Health / Medical research

created May 12, 2010 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (7) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Sea snail saliva may become new treatment for most severe pain

Scientists have developed a new version of a medication, first isolated from the saliva of sea snails, that could be taken in pill form to relieve the most severe forms of pain as effectively as morphine but without risking ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Jul 29, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 1

Milkshake like cocaine for overeaters: Imaging shows the powerful impact food has on the brain

Millions of overweight Americans consider food the enemy. And according to new research, this enemy plays devious mind games.

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Sep 30, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Ritalin improves brain function, task performance in cocaine abusers

(PhysOrg.com) -- Brain-scanning study shows Ritalin improves impaired brain function in people addicted to cocaine, implying it could play a role in facilitating recovery from addiction.

Medicine & Health / Medical research

created Sep 07, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (5) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Scientists uncover previously unknown natural mechanism that controls cocaine use

Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have found that a particular type of genetic material plays a key role in determining vulnerability to cocaine addiction and may offer an entirely new direction for the development ...

Medicine & Health / Medical research

created Jul 07, 2010 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (5) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Birds and mammals share a common brain circuit for learning

(PhysOrg.com) -- Bird song learning is a model system for studying the general principles of learning, but attempts to draw parallels between learning in birds and mammals have been difficult because of anatomical ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 18, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Addiction

Historically, addiction has been defined as physical and psychological dependence on psychoactive substances (for example alcohol, tobacco, heroin, caffeine and other drugs) which cross the blood-brain barrier once ingested, temporarily altering the chemical milieu of the brain.

Addiction can also be viewed as a continued involvement with a substance or activity despite the negative consequences associated with it. Pleasure, enjoyment or relief from actual or perceived ailments would have originally been sought; however, over a period of time involvement with the substance or activity is needed to feel normal. Some psychology professionals and many laypeople now mean 'addiction' to include abnormal psychological dependency on such things as gambling, food, sex, pornography, computers, internet, work, exercise, idolizing, watching TV or certain types of non-pornographic videos, spiritual obsession, self-injury and shopping.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine begins their definition of addiction by describing it as "a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry."

For more information about Addiction, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.