Computational Neuroscience of Drug Addiction
Drug addiction is one of the most important public health problems in Western societies, and is a rising concern for developing nations. Over the past three decades, experimental research on the neurobiology and psychology of drug addiction has generated
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Volume 10
Series Editors Alain Destexhe CNRS Gif-sur-Yvette France Romain Brette École Normale Supérieure Paris France
For further volumes: www.springer.com/series/8164
Boris Gutkin r Serge H. Ahmed Editors
Computational Neuroscience of Drug Addiction
Editors Boris Gutkin Group for Neural Theory LNC, DEC, ENS 75005 Paris France [email protected]
Serge H. Ahmed CNRS UMR 5293 IMN Université Victor Segalen 33076 Bordeaux France [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4614-0750-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-0751-5 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0751-5 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011940849 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Organization of Computational Neuroscience: www.cnsorg.org Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Foreword
One only has to read the newspapers to understand the extent to which addictions are among the scourges of the day. They lead to wastage and wasting of innumerable individual lives, and a huge cost to the body politic, with gargantuan sums of illicit money supporting edifices of corruption. The blame for other modern solecisms, such as burgeoning obesity, is increasingly being laid at the same door. From the perspective of neuroscience, addictions present a critical challenge. Substances with at least initially relatively immediate effects on more or less welldefined sets of receptors, have, in some individuals, a panoply of physiological and psychological consequences that unravel over the course of years. Understanding each domain of inquiry by itself, and the links between them, is critical for understanding the course of addictions, and in the longer run, conceiving more effective options for palliation or even cure. Although there is a near overwhelming volume of data, the complexities of the subject mean that there are also many apparent inconsistencies and contradictions. The understanding of addiction rests on analyses over multiple scales. For instance, we not only have to understand the progressive effects of long-term drug use on receptor characteristics and density, we must also grasp the changes this leads to in the neurons concerned, and then in the dynamical operation and information processing of the circuits and systems those neurons comprise. Equal
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