Journal of Depression and Anxiety
Open Access

Ashim Kumar Basak

Publications

• Review Article
  An Insight into the Cellular Mechanisms of Addiction to Psychostimulants
  Author(s): Ashim Kumar Basak and Tridip Chatterjee Ashim Kumar Basak and Tridip Chatterjee
  
  Natural rewards like food, sex etc are evaluated as pleasureable elements or essential for the survival of a mammal due to the interaction of dopamine (DA) released by ventral tegmental area (VTA) on nucleus accumbens (NAc) and other targets in an interconnected neuronal network in brain called ‘reward circuit. Psychostimulants induce prolonged and much greater interaction of DA with its targets and develop the drug related memory in lieu of the memories of natural rewards and induce motor activities required for drug acquisition. Long term potentiation (LTP), a major contributor of synaptic plasticity, occurs in many components of the reward circuit due to both acute and chronic drug exposures, resulting in the morphological changes of neurons that may underlie drug related memory acquisition. Potentiation may occur in VTA DA neurons, medium spiny neurons (MSNs) of NAc, prefron.. View More»
  DOI: 10.4172/2167-1044.1000238

  Abstract PDF

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