| About
the Wheeler Center, continued from home
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 With its innovative and collaborative research
program, the Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction is exploring
and identifying the genetic risk factors and the neural circuits,
that enable drugs of abuse to take command of the brain. By
so doing, Center researchers hope to find ways to strip these
drugs of their addictive power and to find new avenues for
treatment and prevention.
Center
investigators looking at the genetic variations that influence
learning and memory and the molecular targets of addicting
drugs, hope to understand what happens to the molecular components
of nerve cells when they are exposed to drugs of abuse.
Those analyzing
the effects of addicting drugs on the specialized junctions
between nerve cells (synapses), seek to explain what happens
to synapses when addictive drugs reach the brain's pleasure
centers, especially the dopaminergic reward circuitry.
Those
concentrating on the neural circuits involved in addiction
hope to reveal the connections between molecular changes in
nerve cells and drug tolerance, drug-dependence, and drug
self-administration.
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