The mesolimbic dopamine system: the final common pathway for the reinforcing effect of drugs of abuse?

By R. Pierce, V. Kumaresan. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 2006

1,003 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Drug Addiction as a Pathology of Staged Neuroplasticity (2008, background): “Thus, nicotine promotes excitatory glutamate transmission in the VTA, whereas opioids reduce the inhibitory GABA release on dopamine neurons (Nader and van der Kooy, 1997; Laviolette and van der Kooy, 2004; Pierce and Kumaresan, 2006).”
Title: Does the difference between physically active and couch potato lie in the dopamine system? (2010, positive): “It is well accepted that the dopamine system is a major mediator of addiction to drugs (reviewed extensively in Vetulani, 2001; Peirce and Kumaresan, 2006; and Di Chiara, 2007) [29, 116, 171].”
Neurobiology of the incubation of drug craving (2011, positive): “Many studies using animal models indicate that the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system and the nigrostriatal dopamine system both contribute to cue-induced cocaine seeking [14, 50, 51] and other behavioral effects of cocaine, including cocaine reward [52, 53].”