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A Translation from Goal-Directed to Habitual Control: the Striatum in Drug Addiction

  • Neuroscience & Addiction (A Haghparast and H Ekhtiari, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

Drug addiction starts from recreational drug use, gradually becomes habitual or even compulsive. However, after exposure to addictive drugs, only 20% of individuals finally fall into a vicious cycle of addiction. As the number of addicts worldwide increases year by year, the need for understanding the neural basis underlying addiction is in high demand.

Recent Findings

The intrastriatal functional shifts have been widely recognized to contribute to addiction development, where the nucleus accumbens permits the devolution of its control over behaviour to the dorsal striatum. In addition, compulsive drug seeking and taking have been taken as maladaptive habits, coupling with impaired goal-directed behaviour, thus habitual system dominant behaviour in spite of punishment. However, this hypothesis has not fully been proven at the level of neural mechanisms.

Summary

Here we elaborated the function of the striatum at the different stages of addiction within the associative learning theory framework to highlight the potentially vulnerable targets of addictive drugs. Furthermore, based on current findings, we proposed new possibilities to explain compulsive drug-seeking behaviour.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Nan Sui for guidance.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.3197070674) and the National Natural Science Foundation of Beijing (Grant No. 7202128) to F.S., and CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology. The CAS-VPST Silk Road Science Fund 2021 to N.S.(Grant No. GJHZ202129).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 16 Lin cui Road, Beijing, 100101, People’s Republic of China

    Wenjie Du, Ying Liu, Yiming Meng, Yimin Yan, Lingtong Jin, Jianjun Zhang, Jing Liang, Yonghui Li & Fang Shen

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Wenjie Du, Ying Liu, Yiming Meng, Yimin Yan, Lingtong Jin, Jianjun Zhang, Jing Liang, Yonghui Li & Fang Shen

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  1. Wenjie Du
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W.D. and F.S. wrote the paper. All authors discussed and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Fang Shen.

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Du, W., Liu, Y., Meng, Y. et al. A Translation from Goal-Directed to Habitual Control: the Striatum in Drug Addiction. Curr Addict Rep 8, 530–537 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40429-021-00392-6

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