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- HTH 3533: Drugs and Health (Quackenbush)
HTH 3533: Drugs and Health (Quackenbush)
Readings and Sources for Prof. Quackenbush's HTH 3533 course.
Neurobiology of Drug Use
Neuroscience of Psychoactive Substance Use and Dependence by ISBN: 9789240681057Publication Date: 2004-01-01Chapter 2: Brain Mechanisms: Neurobiology and Neuroanatomy
"This chapter reviews basic principles of brain anatomy and function to provide a framework within which the neurscience of dependence can be discussed."
Human Brain: Major Structures and their Functions
This is a well-explained and at the same time simple video about the Human Brain and its functions. The human brain is the command center for the human nervous system. It receives input from the sensory organs and sends output to the muscles. The human brain has the same basic structure as other mammal brains, but is larger in relation to body size than any other brains.
Drunk Monkeys Fail - Weird Nature
300 years ago vervet monkeys were brought into the island of St. Kitts from West Africa. The monkeys that escaped acquired a taste for alcohol by eating the fermented sugar cane left in the fields. Today, they raid local bars to satisfy their thirst.
- Neurobiology of Addiction: A Neurocircuitry Analysis
Drug addiction represents a dramatic dysregulation of motivational circuits that is caused by a combination of exaggerated incentive salience and habit formation, reward deficits and stress surfeits, and compromised executive function in three stages. The rewarding effects of drugs of abuse, development of incentive salience, and development of drug-seeking habits in the binge/intoxication stage involve changes in dopamine and opioid peptides in the basal ganglia. The increases in negative emotional states and dysphoric and stress-like responses in the withdrawal/negative affect stage involve decreases in the function of the dopamine component of the reward system and recruitment of brain stress neurotransmitters, such as corticotropin-releasing factor and dynorphin, in the neurocircuitry of the extended amygdala. The craving and deficits in executive function in the so-called preoccupation/anticipation stage involve the dysregulation of key afferent projections from the prefrontal cortex and insula, including glutamate, to the basal ganglia and extended amygdala. Molecular genetic studies have identified transduction and transcription factors that act in neurocircuitry associated with the development and maintenance of addiction that might mediate initial vulnerability, maintenance, and relapse associated with addiction.
