Opioid and Psychostimulant Plasticity: Targeting Overlap in Nucleus Accumbens Glutamate Signaling.

ABSTRACT: Commonalities in addictive behavior, such as craving, stimuli-driven drug seeking, and a high propensity for relapse following abstinence, have pushed for a unified theory of addiction that encompasses most abused substances. This unitary theory has recently been challenged - citing distinctions in structural neural plasticity, biochemical signaling, and neural circuitry to argue that addiction to opioids and psychostimulants is behaviorally and neurobiologically distinct. Recent more selective examination of drug-induced plasticity has highlighted that these two drug classes promote an overall reward circuitry signaling overlap through modifying excitatory synapses in the nucleus accumbens - a key constituent of the reward system. We discuss adaptations in presynaptic/postsynaptic and ext

SUBMITTER: Hearing M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5818297 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature