Mechanisms Regulating Compulsive Drug Behaviors

Substance abuse disorder is a chronically relapsing disease that is characterized in part by compulsion to seek and take drug in the presence of adverse consequences and in inappropriate situations. Compulsivity develops progressively, and is hypothesized to derive from dysfunction in motivational and reward processing. Preclinical models have been developed that recapitulate endophenotypes of compulsive drug behaviors to study the pathophysiology and etiology of compulsivity. These models have been used to identify adaptations in brain circuitry, neurotransmission, and epigenetics that underlie compulsive drug use, and have provided a framework for theories that describe the development and expression of compulsivity.