Reprioritizing motivations in addiction

• 成果类型: Editorial Material
• 署名作者: Millan, E. Zayra; McNally, Gavan P.
• 署名单位: University of New South Wales Sydney
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-10603
• DOI: 10.1126/science.ado9989
• 发表日期: 2024-04-19
• 页码: 271-271
• 关键词: nucleus-accumbens; disease

摘要

Drugs of abuse alter neuronal signaling Drug addictions are a leading global cause of health and economic burden, with opioids responsible for 80% of drug use-related deaths ( 1 ). Persistent drug use is accompanied by profound motivational reprioritization ( 2 ), with decision-making skewed toward drug use at the expense of other activities ( 3 ), often with little recognition of adverse consequences ( 4 ). These impacts owe, at least in part, to alterations in the brain's reward systems ( 5 , 6 ), which normally help to identify and respond to factors essential for survival (e.g., food, water). Yet how drugs drive reprioritization toward a myopic focus on drug use has been unclear. On page 294 of this issue, Tan et al. ( 7 ) show that drugs of abuse interfere with signaling in the nucleus accumbens and disrupt natural responses of mice to food and water, providing a new mechanistic understanding of the links between addiction and motivational reprioritization.