Reprioritizing motivations in addiction
Tan et al. (7) show that drugs of abuse interfere with signaling in the nucleus accumbens and disrupt natural responses of mice to food and water, providing a new mechanistic understanding of the links between addiction and motivational reprioritization.
Abstract
Drugs of abuse alter neuronal signaling Drug addictions are a leading global cause of health and economic burden, with opioids responsible for 80% of drug use–related deaths (1). Persistent drug use is accompanied by profound motivational reprioritization (2), with decision-making skewed toward drug use at the expense of other activities (3), often with little recognition of adverse consequences (4). These impacts owe, at least in part, to alterations in the brain’s reward systems (5, 6), which normally help to identify and respond to factors essential for survival (e.g., food, water). Yet how drugs drive reprioritization toward a myopic focus on drug use has been unclear. On page 294 of this issue, Tan et al. (7) show that drugs of abuse interfere with signaling in the nucleus accumbens and disrupt natural responses of mice to food and water, providing a new mechanistic understanding of the links between addiction and motivational reprioritization.