Addiction Relapse Associated with Temptation Brain Chemical - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today

Addiction Relapse Associated with Temptation Brain Chemical - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today: "Review
ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 13 - A stress-related brain chemical that seems to create a susceptibility to temptation may be related to why alcoholics fall off the wagon or clean drug addicts turn recidivist. The chemical is called corticotropin-releasing factor.
So it appears in rats. Corticotropin-releasing factor has long been known to be involved in aversive behavior, making people or animals shy away from pain or distress. But paradoxically, it also appears to play a role in one of the brain's reward systems, according to Kent Berridge, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan.
'In this one reward-related structure -- the nucleus accumbens -- it seems to be having this paradoxical effect of turning on the desire for a reward,' Dr. Berridge said in an interview from Cambridge, England, where he is a visiting professor.
Corticotropin-releasing factor, which is released during stress, has mostly negative effects, including appetite suppression, Dr. Berridge and colleagues noted in the April 13 online issue of the open access journal BMC Biology. But in the nucleus accumbens of experimental rats, it appears to trigger an increased appetite for a pleasurable reward. /.../"