What Part of the Brain Is Responsible for Addiction?
Question by Joshua: What part of the brain is responsible for addiction?
My little brother asked me today “what part of the brain is responsible for addiction?” Being a hopeful neurosurgeon I was extremely perplexed by this question because I had never really thought about it. So I gave him the best answer I could, but it wasn’t a very good answer. It was something along the lines of “there’s not one specific part of the brain that causes addiction, it is a number of things.” I use the word “causes” lightly because I know your brain does not cause addiction. Can someone help me out because I have no idea.
Best answer:
Answer by Kyle
limbic system is whats responsible for pleasure or where your dopomein is stored becuase when you take an addictive your dopomein levels rise
Answer by Alex
The best answer is exactly what you said – not one part but a number of them. However, there is one part that is most responsible for addiction. Secondly, your brain actually can cause addiction… just FYI.
The one part that is most responsible is called the nucleus accumbens. If you lesion this part of the brain, no addiction will take place. On the other hand, if you were to put an electrode into the nucleus accumbens of a rat (which would mimic pleasure/reinforcement) the rat will do anything to obtain that feeling. If you teach the rat to push a lever, and every time the lever is pushed, the rat gets a stimulating electric pulse to the nucleus accumbens, the rat will never stop pushing the lever… will not eat, drink, sleep, or even mate, and will press until it dies.
Other parts of the reward system are the ventral tegmental area, hippocampus, amygdala, and medial prefrontal cortex. All of these are part of the mesolimbic pathway. Dopamine is the predominant neurotransmitter in this pathway, and all are parts of the limbic system.
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