It is frequently said that addiction occurs when drugs “hijack” the brain.It’s hard to nail down what that means, but it does rightly suggest that there is an involuntary takeover of the ...

With the recent rise in opioid abuse and overdose, which has quickly become a national health epidemic, scientists are focused increasingly on understanding the science behind addiction and its effect ...

We're learning more about the craving that fuels self-defeating habits—and how new discoveries can help us kick the habit. Addiction hijacks the brain’s neural pathways. Scientists are ...

Because addiction affects the brain’s executive functions, centered in the prefrontal cortex, individuals who develop an addiction may not be aware that their behavior is causing problems for ...

Figure 1: Drug addiction as a disease of the brain. Chronic exposure to drugs of abuse is required for drug addiction, and its expression involves complex interactions between biological and ...

Sugar addiction seems to be dependence to the natural endogenous opioids that get released upon sugar intake. In both animals and humans, the evidence in the literature shows substantial parallels and ...