A Brief Review of the Relationship between Addiction and Memory Systems

Abstract

This essay will reexamine research on the relationship between human memory and addiction. This paper will review several studies that discussed how memory systems in the human brain are involved in the acquisition of behavior that is learned and is associated with the development of drug addiction and drug relapse. Additional information reveals that when individuals make the transition from recreational drug or impulsive use to compulsive drug abuse, which may result in a neuroanatomical change in areas of the brain from cognitive control guided by the hippocampus/dorsomedial striatum towards conditioned control of behavior managed by the dorsolateral striatum (DLS) [1]. This review also looked at studies that involved experiments with humans and lower animals, which suggested that the hippocampus mediates a cognitive/spatial type of memory, while the dorsal striatum manages stimulus-response (S-R) habit memory, and the amygdala governs the classical conditioning form of learning and stimulus-affective-associative relationships [1]. Overall, these studies utilize the hypothesis of the memory systems view of addiction, and the involvement of learning and memory in the context of drug addiction, which was proposed by them [2]. This theory has been proposed in response to drug addiction research and includes alcohol, amphetamine, and cocaine [1]. The research also explains how stress and anxiety can play a role in how strong emotional excitement can lead to dependent habit memory in rodents and humans [1].