Title:Cognition is a Necessary Factor for Controlling Drug Abuse
Volume: 14
Issue: 4
Author(s): Hamidreza Famitafreshi and Morteza Karimian*
Affiliation:
- Physiology Department, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran,Iran
Keywords:
Addiction, relapse, reinstatement, cue, stress, abuse.
Abstract: Background: Drug abuse is one of the major concerns of human societies. The relapse of
abusing drugs is one of the main targets of addiction therapies. Studies in this regard have introduced
four basic mechanisms: 1) drug-induced reinforcement 2) cue-induced reinforcement 3)
stress-induced reinforcement and 4) negative reinforcement.
Objective: In recent studies, cognition has got great interest in addiction research. It has been proposed
that prefrontal cortex can reduce the risk of relapse, by influencing cognition. In this review,
we are going to discuss the benefit of better cognition in the context of the above four basic mechanisms,
not specifically prefrontal cortex.
Method: A literature search was conducted in all major indexing databases including Pubmed, Embase
and Google Scholar. The included articles were not limited to the time of publication and all
relevant articles were used.
Results: Our findings suggest that cognition is necessary for controlling drug abuse. Also, it was
found that cognition may control relapse to drug abuse by influencing the four basic mechanisms
that are responsible for relapse to drugs.
Conclusion: Cognition is a necessary factor for controlling drug abuse. It suggested paying special
attention to cognition before implementing a plan for treatment of relapse to drug abuse.
