NIDA Notes Archives

This is Archived content. This content is available for historical purposes only. It may not reflect the current state of science or language from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). For current information, please visit nida.nih.gov.

For 30 years, NIDA Notes provided in-depth coverage of research findings on drug misuse and addiction. NIDA Notes was discontinued in 2021.  

Efectos de las drogas sobre la neurotransmisión

 |  Las drogas pueden alterar la manera de pensar, sentir y comportarse de las personas al afectar la neurotransmisión, que es el proceso que usan las neuronas (células nerviosas) en el cerebro para comunicarse entre ellas. Este artículo trata sobre la importancia central de estudiar los efectos de las drogas sobre la neurotransmisión y describe algunos de los métodos experimentales más comunes que se usan en esta investigación. Lea este artículo en inglés.

Buprenorphine Benefits Waitlisted Seekers of Opioid Treatment

 |  In two pilot clinical trials, buprenorphine helped participants reduce their illicit opioid use and injection drug use while awaiting admission to a methadone or buprenorphine treatment program. Researchers minimized the risks for improper use or diversion of the study medication by giving it to trial participants in a computerized, tamper-proof device that dispenses one dose each day.

Endocannabinoid Regulates Cocaine Reward

 |  Investigators have shown that 2-AG, an endocannabinoid (i.e., a cannabinoid manufactured within the body, as opposed to plant-derived), augments the cocaine-induced dopamine surge in the brain’s reward system. The discovery adds to evidence that inhibiting activity in the endocannabinoid system might reduce cocaine’s rewarding and addictive effects.

Impacts of Drugs on Neurotransmission

 |  Drugs can alter the way people think, feel, and behave by disrupting neurotransmission, the process of communication between brain cells. This article discusses the central importance of studying drugs’ effects on neurotransmission and describes some of the most common experimental methods used in this research.

Why Are Our Brains So Big and Powerful?

 |  Why is the human brain so much bigger and more powerful than that of other animals? Researchers have investigated the hypothesis that changes not only in our genes themselves, but in how they are controlled, account for the uniqueness of the human brain. Their findings that species differ particularly extensively in the regulatory regions of many genes also may have implications for understanding why humans are prone to addictions.

Promising Advances in the Search for Safer Opioids

 |  New studies show that two novel compounds powerfully suppressed animals’ pain responses, while producing little or none of the respiratory depression and liability for misuse and abuse associated with morphine and other typical opioids.

Prevention Program Reduces Substance Use By Participants' Friends

 |  The Strengthening Families Program for Youth 10-14 (SFP10-14), an evidence-based intervention that reduces teen substance use, also reduced participants’ friends’ substance use. Two factors that accounted for the nonparticipants’ reductions were less time spent by nonparticipants with their participating friends without adult supervision and improvements in nonparticipants’ attitudes toward substance use. The findings suggest that researchers should consider the potential for diffusion of benefits in designing and implementing prevention programs.

Nonmedical Treatment for Cocaine Addiction Shows Promise in Pilot Trial

 |  Patients who received transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) were more likely to abstain from cocaine than patients who received medications for symptoms associated with abstinence. Researchers concluded that TMS appears to be safe and its efficacy as a treatment for cocaine addiction deserves to be evaluated in a larger clinical trial.

Why Do People Lose Control Over Their Cocaine Use?

 |  Researchers monitored the activity of two types of neurons in mice: “urge” neurons, which promote feelings of reward and repeating behaviors that have produced rewards, and “control” neurons, which dampen those feelings and inhibit behavior.

Quinine as a Tracer for Medication Adherence

 |  Patients who don’t take their medications as prescribed often put themselves at risk for problems including misdiagnoses, complications, and death. A study suggests that adding low doses of quinine to patients’ medications could provide an inexpensive, reliable, and safe method of monitoring whether patients are taking their medications as directed.

A Case for Studying Brain Asymmetry in Drug Use

 |  A new study proposes that research into the discrete roles played by the brain’s two hemispheres could yield important and actionable insights into drug use and addiction. Evidence indicates that two risk factors for substance use, impulsivity and craving, primarily reflect activity in the right and left hemispheres, respectively.

Childhood Maltreatment Changes Cortical Network Architecture and May Raise Risk for Substance Use

 |  Young adults who had been maltreated as children differed from others who had not been maltreated in the connectivity of nine cortical regions. The differences could compromise the maltreated group’s basic social perceptual skills, ability to maintain a healthy balance between introversion and extroversion, and ability to self-regulate their emotions and behavior.

Why Take a Drug That No Longer Gives Pleasure?

 |  In mice, a cocaine-induced imbalance in the activity of two key populations of neurons in the reward system persists for a longer period after repeated exposure to the drug. For long-term users, this change could both weaken the cocaine “high” and strengthen the compulsion to seek the drug.

Brain Imaging Predicts Relapse to Cocaine

 |  A NIDA-supported study has found that a cocaine-addicted person’s chance of managing 1 whole year of abstinence correlates with activity levels in these impaired motivational and decision-making brain areas.

Stress Hormone Sets the Stage for Relapse to Cocaine Use

 |  A stressed rat will seek a dose of cocaine that is too weak to motivate an unstressed rat. Researchers traced the physiological pathway that links stress and the stress hormone corticosterone to increased dopamine activity and heightened responsiveness to cocaine.

A Genetic Nexus of Obesity and Smoking

 |  The hypothesis that obesity and nicotine addiction have common genetic and biological roots is buttressed by a recent NIDA-supported study. Researchers showed that some gene variants that influence body mass...

Gene Variants Reduce Opioid Risks

 |  Two recent studies represent early steps toward the goal of personalized therapy for pain and addiction based on patients’ genetic makeup. One study associated a rare variant of the gene...