Substances like morphine and cocaine profoundly disrupt the brain’s reward mechanism, intensifying cravings while simultaneously disturbing natural impulses such as hunger and thirst.
Australian researchers have now pinpointed a universal reward pathway that seems to recalibrate these basic priorities. Their discovery has been published in the journal Science.
“Natural rewards like food, and drugs both activate the same area of the brain,” explains Jeffrey F. Friedman, a professor at Rockefeller University. “However, our recent findings show that their effects on neural activity are remarkably different. We now understand that addictive drugs uniquely alter these neural pathways in a way that natural physiological responses to hunger or thirst do not.”
