For the first time, research on implicit cognitive processes relevant for the understanding of addictive behaviors and their prevention or treatment is brought together in one volume! The Handbook of Implicit Cognition and Addiction features the work of an internationally renowned group of contributing North American and European authors who draw together developments in basic research on implicit cognition with recent developments in addiction research. Editors Reinout W. Wiers and Alan W. Stacy examine recent findings from a variety of disciplines including basic memory and experimental psychology, experimental psychopathology, emotion, and neurosciences.

Loss of Willpower: Abnormal Neural Mechanisms of Impulse Control and Decision Making in Addiction

Loss of Willpower: Abnormal Neural Mechanisms of Impulse Control and Decision Making in Addiction

Loss of willpower: Abnormal neural mechanisms of impulse control and decision making in addiction

Abstract: Addiction is a condition in which the person becomes unable to choose according to long-term outcomes when it comes to drugs. We will argue that this is the product of an imbalance between two separate, but interacting, neural systems: (1) animpulsive, amygdala-dependent system for signaling the pain or pleasure ofimmediate prospects and (2) areflective, orbitofrontal-dependent system for signaling the prospects of thefuture. The conditions that lead to this imbalance include (1) a dysfunctional reflective system and (2) a hyperactive impulsive system. In other words, drugs can acquire properties of triggering bottom-up, involuntary signals through the amygdala that ...

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