Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Potenza was born on April 27, 1965. [1] He completed his medical degree at the Yale University School of Medicine along with his fellowship, residency, and PhD. [2] In the fourth year of his residency at Yale, Potenza received a grant from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression to study the link between the response to stress and the onset of mental illnesses.
Marina Rachel Picciotto (born June 22, 1963) is an American neuroscientist known for her work on the role of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in addiction, memory, and reward behaviors. She is the Charles B. G. Murphy Professor of Psychiatry and professor in the Child Study Center and the Departments of Neuroscience and of Pharmacology at the ...
Eric J. Nestler is the Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, Director of the Friedman Brain Institute, and Dean for Academic Affairs at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Chief Scientific Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System. [1] [2] [3] His research is focused on a molecular approach to drug addiction and depression.
Between 2005 and 2007 Brewer worked in the post-doctoral Neuroscience Research Training Program at the Yale School of Medicine. He was chief resident in 2007 at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit of the Connecticut Mental Health Center, and he had a research training fellowship in substance abuse at Yale.
Neuroscientists believe that drug addicts’ behavior is a direct correlation to some physiological change in their brain, caused by using drugs. This view believes there is a bodily function in the brain causing the addiction. This is brought on by a change in the brain caused by brain damage or adaptation from chronic drug use. [1] [2]
One form of behavioral neuropharmacology focuses on the study of drug dependence and how drug addiction affects the human mind. Most research has shown that the major part of the brain that reinforces addiction through neurochemical reward is the nucleus accumbens. The image to the right shows how dopamine is projected into this area.
“The brain changes, and it doesn’t recover when you just stop the drug because the brain has been actually changed,” Kreek explained. “The brain may get OK with time in some persons. But it’s hard to find a person who has completely normal brain function after a long cycle of opiate addiction, not without specific medication treatment.”
The common biomolecular mechanisms underlying addiction – CREB and ΔFosB – were reviewed by Eric J. Nestler in a 2013 review. [3] Genetics and mental disorders may precipitate the severity of a drug addiction. It is estimated that 50% of healthy individuals developing an addiction can trace the cause to genetic factors. [4]