brain systems, they provide a unique challenge in understanding how pharmacological activation influences reward mechanisms leading to persistent compulsive be-The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) supports over 85 percent of the havior. On the other hand, the study of obesity, world's research on drug pathological gambling, and other motivated states asso-abuse and addiction. Drug ciated...

A recent study of how food-seeking behavior in the sea slug Aplysia becomes compulsive provides new insights into the neural mechanisms of operant conditioning.

OBJECTIVE There is little information about obsessive-compulsive disorder in large representative community samples. The authors aimed to establish obsessive-compulsive disorder prevalence and its clinical typology among adults in private households in Great Britain and to obtain generalizable estimates of impairment and help-seeking. METHOD Data from the British National Psychiatric Morbidit...

The mystery of why some people are compelled to repeatedly engage in relationships with people who are cruel to them is frequently pondered in literature and psychology. The present paper posits that the etiology of this pathological relationship pattern derives from a parental relationship that was both highly exciting and highly frustrating. Spontaneous recapitulations of the passionate masoc...

Highly pernicious events can result in a variety of severe adult psychiatric manifestations, including pedophilia in select individuals with a history of prior "at-risk factors." Influences such as social isolation can either increase or decrease the outcome. This article reviews some of the other sequential developmental factors that might contribute to sexual compulsivity in such biographies,...

Nicotinic α4β2 receptors are the most abundant subtypes of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) expressed in brain regions implicated in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). These receptors are known to modify normal and addictive behaviors by modulating neuronal excitability. Desformylflustrabromine (dFBr) is a novel, positive allosteric modulator (PAM) of high acetylcholine sensitivity ...

Normative thinking about addiction has traditionally been divided between, on the one hand, a medical model which sees addiction as a disease characterized by compulsive and relapsing drug use over which the addict has little or no control and, on the other, a moral model which sees addiction as a choice characterized by voluntary behavior under the control of the addict. Proponents of the form...

Ranked fourth in the list of mental illnesses, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) accounts for about ten percent of patients visiting medical centers. There have so far been various methods of treatment for OCD. An attempt was made in this study to determine the effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) on clinical signs and emotion regulation among patients with OCD. This was a quas...