While most studies focus on brain and behavior disorders as cause for substance abuse (ie., self-medication), Scientific Council Member Eric Nestler, M.D., Ph.D. and colleagues have discovered how substance abuse can actually increase risk for stress-related illness. “Our results provide fundamentally novel insight into how prior exposure to a drug of abuse enhances vulnerability to depression and other stress-related disorders,” says Dr. Nestler. “Identifying such common regulatory mechanisms may aid in the development of new therapies for addiction and depression .”
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Alcohol and drugs of abuse such as cocaine and methamphetamines are well known to alter the normal workings of the human brain. For scientists like Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Grantee Paul A. Slesinger, Ph.D., understanding the precise way in which this interference occurs is the key to developing a new wave of highly specific treatments to control the effects of substance abuse .
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NARSAD-Funded Researchers Find New Way to Uncover Drug Targets for Brain and Behavior Disorders NARSAD Distinguished Investigators James Eberwine, Ph.D.,...
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From The Quarterly, Winter 2011 A key environmental factor contributing to and highly predictive of psychiatric illness is stress. Children...
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