NEUROCIRCUITRY OF ADDICTION

Addiction can be defined as drug-induced changes in the central nervous system (CNS) that produce maladaptive al-terations in spontaneous behavior and in the behavioral re-sponse to readministration of that drug. Maladaptive behav-iors include those identified as criteria for addiction in the DSM-IV. In general what most psychiatric metrics describe as addiction associated behaviors is the emergence of behav-iors to obtain drug reward at the expense of engaging in behaviors to seek natural rewards, ranging from biological rewards such as sex to cultural rewards such as stable per-sonal relationships. The substitution of drug reward for nat-ural reward suggests that the neuropathology of addiction may reside in the same neural systems that mediate the detection and acquisition of natural rewards. This postulate forms a primary premise in the search for the neurobiologi