ABSTRACT
A key symptom of alcohol dependence is the strong desire to consume alcohol,which of-ten leads individuals to relapse despite negative social,interpersonal and health consequences. Core of crav-ing is repeatedly drinking alcohol and relevant cues can form pathological reward memory,which is the root cause of craving and relapse. Therefore,the extinction of the alcohol related reward memory is important for reducing relapse. The establishment of alcohol reward memories is associated with reward,motivation and memory circuits in the brain. Dysregulation of alcohol reward memory pathways is a key factor in the devel-opment of alcohol dependence, and the nature of these pathways varies depending on the brain region in which they are located. So systematic review that what reward memory pathways are involved in the develop-ment of alcohol dependence,and what brain regions are involved in these pathways,combined with animal ex-periments and alcohol dependent magnetic resonance imaging data,explain how alcohol reward memory signa-ling pathways regulate alcohol reward memory and how these pathways interact with neural circuits,plays a key role in the early recognition,prevention and treatment of alcohol dependence.
ABSTRACT
Drug addiction is a chronic,relapsing brain disorder,which develops,in part,because of aberrant learning and memory. Accumulative studies during recent decades demonstrated that addictive drug hijacks the normal memory circuit in the brain to form a long-lasting drug reward memory,which determines relapse to addictive drug. In this review,we will describe what has been learned about drug reward memory,especially focused on one of the associative drug reward memory models,drug-induced conditioned place preference. Drug reward memory is a dynamic process,which consists of several stages,including acquisition,consolidation,maintenance,retrieval,reconsolidation and extinction. Interventions with pharmacological in these memory processes will differentially regulate drug reward memory. Furthermore , the recently developed novel pure behavioral procedure according to the hypothesis of memory processes,e.g. post-retrieval extinction,could erase drug reward memory,which shows more advantages than the pharmacological medications that used in memory studies. Finally, we discussed two major methodological issues in drug reward memory,procedure and timing,which should be carefully considered when designing the related studies and interpreting the results from related studies. So far,it is not sure whether it is feasible to develop a pharmacological medication that only erases drug reward memory without impairing normal memories,we propose that inhibition of drug reward memory would be a good strategy to limit the risk of relapse to addictive drug. Although current findings on drug reward memory benefits little for treatment of drug addiction,the ongoing studies on drug reward memory will provide a promising strategy for reducing the risk of relapse to addictive drug.
ABSTRACT
Drug addiction is a chronic brain disease with a high incidence of relapse. Environmental cues that previously and repeatedly associated with drugs of abuse easily evoke relapse to addicts even after long period of drug-free state. Such a long lasting property of conditioning is considered a form of long-term memory and has a strong correlation with synaptic plasticity like long-term potentiation (LTP). Protein kinase M zeta (PKMzeta) has been known to play an important role in the maintenance of long-term memory as well as LTP in various brain areas. Likewise, in a few brain areas examined out of the rewarding circuit, PKMzeta seems to play a similarly important role in the maintenance of conditioned memory. These results suggest that PKMzeta may become a new target to manipulate to reverse pre-formed drug-related memory and accompanied behaviors.