Why environmental cues make drug addiction extra hard to beat
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 14:12
in Psychology & Sociology
Besides triggering the brain's emotional and stimulus-response systems, environmental cues activate areas where memories are processed, according to this study. Prompting these memory processing systems makes it extra difficult to counter addiction because the classic stimulus-response mechanisms are reinforced by the memory effects of environmental drug cues. While this double effect makes it hard to treat drug abuse, this finding may offer a way to use cues to improve cognitive behavioural therapy.