Neuroscience lab exploring the brain circuits responsible for motivation and addiction using viral tracing and advanced microscopy techniques in rodent models. This project is for any student ...

What characterizes many people with depression, schizophrenia and some other mental illnesses is anhedonia: an inability to gain pleasure from normally pleasurable experiences. Researchers have now ...

In March, long-term marijuana smoker Woody Harrelson surprised fans by announcing he was giving up his chronic pot habit, saying it made him “emotionally unavailable.” Likewise, in June, notorious ...

Cellular-level changes to a part of the brain's reward system induced by chronic exposure to the psychoactive component of marijuana may contribute to the drug's pleasurable and potentially addictive ...

Scientists of the Higher School of Economics, Indiana University, and École normale supérieure clarified how alcohol influences the dopamine and inhibitory cells in the midbrain that are involved in ...

People who start smoking during their teenage years are more likely to be heavy drinkers later in life, and a new study in rats has now shown how exposure to nicotine during adolescence, but not in ...

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger, in the brain. It has a calming effect by blocking certain signals in the nervous system. The brain produces and responds to ...