I attended the conference in April and was inspired by the advancements that have been made in addiction treatment.
Both tracks of research have been valuable tools in the development of pharmacotherapies for treating maladaptive decision making in drug addiction, and a number of common drugs have been studied in both designs.
The OFC is associated with impaired decision making in drug addiction (London et al., 2000) while an intact OFC plays an important role in spatial learning: an intact OFC is essential for acquisition and consolidation of spatial memory in rats (Vafaei and Rashidy-Pour, 2004) and it is involved in the retrieval of route related contextual information in humans (Brown et al., 2010).
Discussions ranged from the size of my calculator buttons with a maths teacher, one man's Made in Chelsea addiction, the brief history of someone's ex-girlfriend, and my being challenged by a pharmacist to try to buy three packs of paracetamol next time I was in Tesco.
Great strides have been made in destigmatizing and mainstreaming addiction.
This critical step may correspond to the "loss of inhibitory control in decision making" against addiction suggested by some investigators [ 118].
Most of the neuroimaging studies on the frontal cortex are in the field of neuropsychology, specially processing of reward and punishment reinforcers in situations including decision making [59], addiction [60] but have also been reported in pain [61].
While progress has been made in combating alcoholism and drug addiction in the United States, the medical establishment is still failing in large numbers to diagnose the disease in their patients, several experts said at a recent conference.
The cost of alcohol abuse to taxpayers could be reduced if investment was made in early intervention services, two addiction charities have claimed.
The Crosstown clinic, by contrast, is prescribing top-quality stuff diacetylmorphine made in Switzerland to 120 people whose addictions are tenacious enough to warrant the treatment.The hope is that they will take safer drugs, lead more regular lives and eventually move to methadone.
