Neurobiological research on addiction: What value has it added to the concept?

Abstract

The initial goal of neurobiological research on addiction was to identify the neural mechanisms involved in the mediation and expression of addictive behavior. More recently, however, it has attributed causal roles to these mechanisms, as illustrated by the definition of addiction as a brain disease caused by chronic exposure to a drug. This concept carries a number of implications that can be assessed experimentally and clinically. None of these implications is borne out by the currently available evidence. The interactions of neuronal systems involved in addiction are also involved in adaptation to experience and environmental change. Much of the neurobiological research to date has not differentiated between causes of addiction, neuronal mechanisms that are activated by them, and risk factors that contribute to individual vulnerability. It has largely ignored the important experiential and environmental influences known to affect the prevalence of addiction in different populations or different times, and it has so far directed much less attention to other forms of addiction-like behavior that do not involve drugs. These failures are not inherent in neurobiological research but require reorientation of objectives, including more emphasis on the study of mechanisms by which environment and experience, including drug experience, can determine whether genetic risk factors are expressed or remain dormant and can direct neuroadaptive mechanisms toward alternative outcomes.

Are animal models of addiction useful?

“…This is important in the broader context of concerns about the predictive validity of animal models of complex psychiatric disorders, which have prompted the pharmaceutical industry to drastically reduce their funding of research that relies on such models to develop novel pharmacotherapies . Many experimental procedures such as drug self‐administration and conditioned place preference that were historically interpreted as animal models of addiction are now understood to be models of substance reward, instrumentalization and non‐addictive substance use, rather than models of addiction .…”

Problem gambling—a Lacanian Real

“…The Official Journal of the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol ------IJADR 4(1) ------current knowledge of excessive behaviors is based, it is difficult not to conclude that today's scientific methodologies are not able to wholly grasp what these behaviors really are (e.g., Kalant, 2015).…”

Addiction: A highly successful, essentially contested concept

“…However, as pointed by Kalant (2015) from the perspective of neurobiology and Simmat-Durand and Koski-Jännes (2015) from the perspective of social sciences, research strongly indicates that in the group of psychiatric disorders, addiction may be the very case in point where the interactions between biologic, psychosocial, and cultural explanations need to be taken into account in their full force in both research as well as prevention and harmreducing work. As noted by Kalant, addictive disorders are understood in certain ways depending on the dominant scientific presuppositions, which may change if they are tested properly.…”

“…Recently, following the fast developments in neuroscience, research on neuroscientific causes, processes, and mechanisms has to some degree been favored at the expense of psychosocial models of addictive behaviors. However, it is increasingly recognized that in order to complete the great puzzle of risk consumption, more effort should be put on environmental explanations (Kalant, 2015) and the interactions between different fields of knowledge. If there is a common structure in which all types of risk consumption is rooted, this might not be located in particular biological, psychosocial, or cultural processes, but in the interaction between them.…”