Drugs futures 2025? : horizon scan / Office of Science and Technology.

  • Great Britain. Office of Science and Technology
Date:
2005
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Drugs futures 2025? : horizon scan / Office of Science and Technology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/36 page 19
    Our emerging knowledge Advances in neuroscience Brain science, drugs and addiction involve several rapidly-moving areas of neuroscience and, indeed, of science in general. There are new conceptual advances In experimental psychology, technological advances In neuroimaging and advances in our understanding at the molecular and genetic levels. Within the next few years, we expect to have a good understanding of the main neural components of motivated behaviour, and how these are affected by drugs and other reinforcers such as money. There have been rapid advances in understanding the nature of the overlap between the brain systems implicated in drug abuse and compulsive gambling and those systems controlling behaviour motivated by natural rewards such as food. The current focus is to understand how the systems mediating drug addiction differ from those implicated in normal motivation. The other anticipated areas of major advance will be in finding the molecular correlates of these processes, and in analysing the neuropsychological processes involved in relapse to drug taking. This science could help to inform a more developed rational basis for understanding relapse in the next five years. Our understanding of the neural basis of cognition has also made dramatic advances and is only a little way behind our understanding of the motivational systems. The next goal is to find how cognition-enhancing drugs and those that are abused affect the brain mechanisms controlling cognition. In parallel with this are startling new juxtapositions of neuroscience with social psychology and economics that may enable us to understand the neurological basis for sophisticated decision-making, and how this may be affected adversely by drugs. This knowledge will affect our perception of the addict and our attitudes towards drug abuse and behavioural addiction. Another major scientific advance will be to understand the basis of individual differences in responses to drugs. This will capitalise on our increasing knowledge of the genome and our ability to apply this learning. In 20 years genotyping could be widely available at birth for children in the developed world.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3