Addiction and the Brain: Are We Hard Wired to Abuse Drugs

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Drug abuse is one of the world's most challenging public health problems, taking a tremendous societal toll at many levels - from its cost (more than $484 billion per year in the U.S. alone for health care expenditures, lost earnings, and costs associated with crime and accidents) to the human suffering it causes in the form of cancer, heart disease, AIDS, stress, child abuse and other violence. This enormous burden affects all of society - substance abusers, their families, the educational system, industry, social welfare and criminal justice systems, and the public at large. Fortunately, recent scientific advances have revolutionized our understanding of addiction as a chronic disease, with dramatic implications for improving prevention and treatment. Some of the greatest advances have come from cross-disciplinary teams of chemists, physicists, and medical doctors using sophisticated brain-imaging technologies to reveal the mechanisms underlying the reinforcing, addictive, and toxic properties of drugs. To present recent brain-imaging advances in the field of drug addiction, we propose to hold a symposium titled "Addiction and the Brain: Are We Hard Wired to Abuse Drugs?" as part of the official program of the 2007 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), to be held in San Francisco, CA, February 15-19, 2007.