Nora D. Volkow

TL;DR: Cocaine is a naturally occurring alkaloid extracted from the leaves of the South American shrub Erythroxylon coca that possesses short-acting local anesthetic and vasoconstrictor properties, which make it clinically useful for topical application.

TL;DR: In normal mice, ethanol intake is associated with D2 receptor-mediated neurotransmission, which exerts a protective effect against ethanol overconsumption under stress, and in mice with low Drd2 expression, alcohol intake isassociated with DAT function which is upregulated under stress leading to ethanol overConsumption.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated changes in the total neuronal density and relative concentration of D2r-expressing neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), dorsal striatum (Dstr), nucleus accumbens (NAc), and ventral tegmental area (VTA) in both male and female mice passively exposed to cocaine for two weeks.

TL;DR: Behavioral associations suggest that successful AI is an active process requiring more energy in obese but not in non-obese men, and the additional required effort to increase cognitive control in response to food stimulation in obese compared with non-Obese men may contribute to their uncontrolled eating behavior.

TL;DR: The Healing Communities Study (HCS), part of the National Institutes of Health Healing Addiction Long-Term initiative to address the opioid crisis, is testing whether an integrated set of evidence-based prevention and treatment interventions can reduce overdose mortality by 40% over a 3-year period (the first year to select interventions and train personnel and 2 years of implementation).