The Neurobiology of Addiction

Professor Robbins is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Head of the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He is also Director of the Cambridge MRC-Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute (BCNI), the main objective of which is to inter-relate basic and clinical research in psychiatry and neurology for such conditions as Parkinson's, Huntington's, and Alzheimer's diseases, frontal lobe injury, schizophrenia, depression, drug addiction, and developmental syndromes such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The BCNI has a particular focus on pharmacological treatments in neuropsychiatry and neurological disorders and how they actually work. Trevor has been President of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society (1992-1994) and he won that Society's inaugural Distinguished Achievement Award in 2001. He was also President of the British Association of Psychopharmacology from 1996 to 1997. He a Fellow of the Royal Society David is currently the Edmond J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and Molecular Imaging at Imperial College London He received his undergraduate training in medicine at Cambridge and Guy's Hospital, and continued training in neurology to MRCP. After completing his psychiatric training in Oxford, he continued there as a lecturer and then later as a Wellcome Senior Fellow in psychiatry. He then spent two years as Chief of the Section of Clinical Science in the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in NIH, Bethesda, USA. On returning to England in 1988 he set up the Psychopharmacology Unit in Bristol, an interdisciplinary research grouping spanning the departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology. In December 2008 he joined Imperial College London as the Edmond J Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology to concentrate on development of PET imaging. Professor Everitt graduated in Zoology and Psychology at Hull University, received a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, and undertook post-doctoral research at Birmingham and at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, with the eminent neuroanatomists Tomas Hökfelt and Kjell Fuxe. He was appointed to the Department of Anatomy at the University of Cambridge in 1974, became a Fellow of Downing College in 1976, a tenured University Lecturer and a Director of Studies in Medicine at Downing in 1979. He has served on several national and international advisory committees and has been President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, the European Brain and Behaviour Society and the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), and has been awarded an Honorary D.Sc. by Hull University

Introduction. The neurobiology of drug addiction: new vistas ; Neurobiological mechanisms for opponent motivational processes in addiction ; Neural mechanisms underlying the vulnerability to develop compulsive drug-seeking habits and addiction ; The incentive sensitization theory of addiction: some current issues ; Psychological and neural mechanisms of relapse ; Neurobiology of nicotine dependence ; Cognitive and emotional consequences of binge drinking: role of amygdala and prefrontal cortex ; The neurobiology of pathological gambling and drug addiction: an overview and new findings ; Overlapping neuronal circuits in addiction and obesity: evidence of systems pathology ; Neurogenetic studies of alcohol addiction ; Genetics of addictions: strategies for addressing heterogeneity and polygenicity of substance use disorders ; Positron emission tomography imaging studies of dopamine receptors in primate models of addiction ; Context-induced relapse to drug seeking: a review ; Transcriptional mechanisms of addiction: role of changes in FosB ; Parallel studies of cocaine-related neural and cognitive impairment in humans and monkeys ; Acute effects of cocaine on the neurobiology of cognitive control ; Evidence-based treatments of addiction