Competing Decision Systems and Drug Craving: How Neuroeconomics Can Bridge the Gap

What is it about?

Craving is typically conceptualized as a response that only involves reward regions of the brain. Emerging research, however, shows that regions of the brain involved with self-control are also activated during drug craving tasks. Neuroeconomics, a combination of behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience, uses behavioral tasks to study activation in regions of the brain and should be further used to study regions of the brain implicated in drug craving.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Drug craving has been studied for a long time, however, craving research has had little impact on helping to treat substance abuse. The primary goal of our paper is to demonstrate how neuroeconomic tasks can bridge the gap between neuroscience and behavioral research on craving. To date, research on craving tends to be either from a psychology/behavioral economic viewpoint or biological/physiological one. Our paper discusses how a collaborative approach might greatly impact clinical efforts.