Drug addiction remains one of the most important public health problems in western societies and is a rising concern for developing nations. Over the past 3 decades, experimental research on the neurobiology and psychology of drug addiction has generated a torrent of exciting data, from the molecular up to the behavioral levels. As a result, a new and pressing challenge for addiction research is to formulate a synthetic theoretical framework that goes well beyond mere scientific eclectism to deepen our understanding of drug addiction and to foster our capacity to prevent and to cure drug addiction. Intrigued by the apparent irrational behavior of drug addicts, researchers from a wide range of scientific disciplines have formulated a plethora of theoretical schemes over the years to understand addiction. However, most of these theories and models are qualitative in nature and are formulated using terms that are often ill-defined. As a result, the empirical validity of these models has been difficult to test rigorously, which has served to generate more controversy than clarity. In this context, as in other scientific fields, mathematical and computational modeling should contribute to the development of more testable and rigorous models of addiction.

With verve and humor in an easily readable style, David Redish brings together cutting edge research in psychology, robotics, economics, neuroscience, and the new fields of neuroeconomics and computational psychiatry, to show how vulnerabilities, or "failure-modes," in the decision-making system can lead to serious dysfunctions, such as irrational behavior, addictions, problem gambling, and PTSD. Ranging widely from the surprising roles of emotion, habit, and narrative in decision-making, to the larger philosophical questions of how mind and brain are related, what makes us human, the nature of morality, free will, and the conundrum of robotics and consciousness, The Mind within the Brain offers fresh insight into one of the most complex aspects of human behavior.

Cognitive, Clinical, and Neural Aspects of Drug Addiction focuses on the theories that cause drug addiction, including avoidance behavior, self-medication, reward sensitization, behavioral inhibition and impulsivity. Dr. Moustafa takes this book one-step further by reviewing the psychological causes of relapse, including the role stress, anxiety and depression play. By examining both the causes of drug addiction and relapse, this book will help clinicians create individualized treatment options for their patients suffering from drug addiction. Understanding the development of individual drug addictions are often difficult to understand and, more often, difficult to treat. The most successful treatments begin with studying why individuals become addicted to drugs and how to change their thinking and behavior.

Drug addiction may be viewed as a form of learning during which strong associations linking actions to drug-seeking are expressed as persistent stimulus–response habits, thereby maintaining a vulnerability to relapse. Disrupting cue–drug memory could be an efficient strategy to reduce the strength of cues in motivating drug-taking behavior. Upon reactivation, these memories undergo a reconsolidation process that can be blocked pharmacologically, providing an opportunity to prevent the powerful control of drug cues on behavior. This conceptually elegant approach still calls for more experimental data. However, an increasing body of evidence suggests that drug taking not only accelerates habit forming, but has long-lasting effects on interactions between memory systems eventually leading to a functional imbalance. The dorsal part of the striatum plays a critical role in habit/procedural learning, whereas the hippocampal memory system encodes relationships between events and their later flexible use. Both humans and rodents studies support the view that the hippocampus and the dorsal striatum interact in either a cooperative or competitive manner during learning, the prefrontal cortex being involved in the selection of an appropriate learning strategy. Chronic drug consumption biases normal interactions between these memory systems. For instance, drug-experienced rodents tend to use preferentially striatum-dependent learning strategies in navigational tasks. These persistent effects seem to occur at cellular, neurophysiological and behavioral levels to promote specific, striatal-dependent forms of learning, to the detriment of spatial/declarative, hippocampal-dependent and more flexible types of memory. Whether cue sensitive and response learners, in contrast to spatial learners, could be prone to drug addiction is an intriguing hypothesis which clearly deserves to be further explored. A loss of flexibility may be uncovered also by imposing changing rules on the subject, such as requiring an attentional shift between different perceptual features of a complex stimulus, as in the attentional set shifting task which was recently adapted to rodents. Working memory is at risk during transition phases, although it remains to be determined whether withdrawal-induced alterations are observed also during protracted abstinence. Drug-induced cognitive biases thus lead to cognitive rigidity which could play a critical, yet overlooked role in different phases of addiction (acquisition, extinction/withdrawal and relapse). They are also likely to preclude the clinical efficiency of treatments. Therefore, the aim of this research topic is to provide an overview of the current work investigating the long-term impact of drug use on learning and memory processes, how multiple memory systems modulate drug-seeking behavior, as well as how drug-induced cognitive biases could contribute to the persistence of addictive behaviors.

Growth in the pharmaceutical market has slowed down – almost to a standstill. One reason is that governments and other payers are cutting costs in a faltering world economy. But a more fundamental problem is the failure of major companies to discover, develop and market new drugs. Major drugs losing patent protection or being withdrawn from the market are simply not being replaced by new therapies – the pharmaceutical market model is no longer functioning effectively and most pharmaceutical companies are failing to produce the innovation needed for success. This multi-authored new book looks at a vital strategy which can bring innovation to a market in need of new ideas and new products: Systems Biology (SB). Modeling is a significant task of systems biology. SB aims to develop and use efficient algorithms, data structures, visualization and communication tools to orchestrate the integration of large quantities of biological data with the goal of computer modeling. It involves the use of computer simulations of biological systems, such as the networks of metabolites comprise signal transduction pathways and gene regulatory networks to both analyze and visualize the complex connections of these cellular processes. SB involves a series of operational protocols used for performing research, namely a cycle composed of theoretical, analytic or computational modeling to propose specific testable hypotheses about a biological system, experimental validation, and then using the newly acquired quantitative description of cells or cell processes to refine the computational model or theory.

Psychobiology provides a comprehensive, yet accessible introduction to the study of psychobiology and the key concepts, topics and research that are core to understanding the brain and the biological basis of our behaviour. Assuming no prior knowledge of biology, the text emphasises the interaction of psychobiology with other core areas of psychology and disciplines. Through the use of exciting and engaging examples, the role of psychobiology in the real world is explored and emphasisised to allow students to connect theory to practice in this fascinating subject.

The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Anthropology is the first instalment of The SAGE Handbook of the Social Sciences series and encompasses major specialities as well as key interdisciplinary themes relevant to the field. Globally, societies are facing major upheaval and change, and the social sciences are fundamental to the analysis of these issues, as well as the development of strategies for addressing them. This handbook provides a rich overview of the discipline and has a future focus whilst using international theories and examples throughout. The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Anthropology is an essential resource for social scientists globally and contains a rich body of chapters on all major topics relevant to the field, whilst also presenting a possible road map for the future of the field. Part 1: Foundations Part 2: Focal Areas Part 3: Urgent Issues Part 4: Short Essays: Contemporary Critical Dynamics

Like in the case of drugs, gambling hijacks reward circuits in a brain which is not prepared to receive such intense stimulation. Dopamine is normally released in response to reward and uncertainty in order to allow animals to stay alive in their environment – where rewards are relatively unpredictable. In this case, behavior is regulated by environmental feedbacks, leading animals to persevere or to give up. In contrast, drugs provide a direct, intense pharmacological stimulation of the dopamine system that operates independently of environmental feedbacks, and hence causes “motivational runaways”. With respect to gambling, the confined environment experienced by gamblers favors the emergence of excitatory conditioned cues, so that positive feedbacks take over negative feedbacks. Although drugs and gambling may act differently, their abnormal activation of reward circuitry generates an underestimation of negative consequences and promotes the development of addictive/compulsive behavior. In Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, dopamine-related therapies may disrupt these feedbacks on dopamine signalling, potentially leading to various addictions, including pathological gambling. The goal of this Research Topic is to further our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the development of pathological gambling. This eBook contains a cross-disciplinary collection of research and review articles, ranging in scope from animal behavioral models to human imaging studies.

"A fascinating introduction" (Steven Pinker) to the science of decision-making One of the leading thinkers in the computational neuroscience revolution offers a brilliant new perspective on the mind?s decision-making process. Why do we make the choices we make? How can science explain free will? If our brains are like slow computers originally programmed for survival with goals like food, water, and sex, why do we make choices that go against our own biological best interests? Where do values come from? What role do emotions play? From how we decide what we consume to the romantic, ethical, and financial choices we make, Read Montague guides readers through a new approach to the mind that is both entertaining and illuminating.

For much of the 20th century, theories of addictive behaviour and motivation were polarized between two models. The first model viewed addiction as a moral failure for which addicts are rightly held responsible and judged accordingly. The second model, in contrast, viewed addiction as a specific brain disease caused by neurobiological adaptations occurring in response to chronic drug or alcohol use, and over which addicts have no choice or control. As our capacity to observe neurobiological phenomena improved, the second model became scientific orthodoxy, increasingly dominating addiction research and informing public understandings of addiction. More recently, however, a dissenting view has emerged within addiction research, based partly on new scientific research and partly on progress in philosophical and psychological understandings of relevant mental phenomena. This view does not revert to treating addiction as a moral failure, but nonetheless holds that addictive behaviour is fundamentally motivated by choice and subject to at least a degree of voluntary control. On this alternative model of addiction, addictive behaviour is an instrumental means to ends that are desired by the individual, although much controversy exists with respect to the rationality or irrationality of these ends, the degree and nature of the voluntary control of addictive behaviour and motivation, the explanation of the difference between addictive and non-addictive behaviour and motivation, and, lastly, the extent to which addictive behaviour and motivation is correctly characterised as pathological or diseased. This research topic includes papers in the traditions of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, law and social science that explore alternative understandings of addiction.