ABSTRACT
Addiction can be characterized as a persistent state in which there is a diminished ability to regulate the compulsive desire to consume drugs, often regardless of potential adverse consequences. This chapter describes the diagnostic criteria and main clinical features of dependence, including its prevalence, harms and associated comorbidities, as well as the underlying genetics. It outlines the neurobiology of addiction, and discusses the involvement of frontostriatal circuitry in the persistence of drug-seeking behaviours. This will be followed by a review of neuropsychological, neuroimaging and brain stimulation studies of cognitive inhibitory deficits and alterations of the frontostriatal circuitry across specific substance-dependent populations (cocaine, nicotine and alcohol). With regards to the definition of dependence, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced 'drug dependence' as a description to encompass both physiological dependence and psychological dependence. The chapter discusses that the terms 'dependence' and 'addiction' will be used interchangeably to regulate the compulsive desire to consume drugs, regardless of adverse consequences.
