The science of addiction
Livingstone
Why do people succumb to drug, alcohol, gambling and food addictions? Today, science is playing a bigger role in understanding why people become addicted and how to curb these dangerous behaviours.
While society often continues to stigmatise addiction, we're increasingly understanding that addiction is a genuine medical condition that has a neurological basis. This has resulted in innovative treatments, better education, and significant research that’s disrupting the exploitation of addicts by the tobacco, gambling and fast-food giants.
We're increasingly understanding that addiction is a genuine medical condition that has a neurological basis.
In this episode of A Different Lens, Monash experts discuss the research that's helping change the way we view and treat different forms of addiction.
Related articles:
Obesity epidemic: understanding how the brain responds to food choices, by Antonio Verjejo-Garcias
Pokies addict loses case against Crown Melbourne, by Charles Livingstone
Ice psychosis: what is it, and why do only some users get it? by Shalini Arunogiri
About the Authors
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Charles livingstone
Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine; Head, Gambling and Social Determinants unit, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences
Charles' current principal research interest is critical gambling studies, including in particular gambling policy reform, and the politics, regulation and social impacts of electronic gambling machine (EGM) gambling.
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Wendy brown
Professor, Surgery Alfred Hospital
Professor Wendy Brown was the first woman to be appointed Chair of the Monash University Department of Surgery in 2015. She is also the Director of the Centre for Obesity Research and Education (CORE) and Clinical Lead for the National Bariatric Surgery Registry and the Victorian Upper GI Cancer Registry. Her research focuses on optimally managing the chronic disease of obesity and measuring the effects of weight loss on health, quality of life and survival.
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Dan lubman
Professor Addiction Studies and Services, Monash University and Director, Turning Point and Monash Addiction Research Centre
Dan has worked across mental health and drug treatment settings in the UK and Australia. His research includes investigating the harms associated with alcohol, drugs and gambling, the impact of alcohol and drug use on brain function, the relationship between substance use, gambling and mental disorder, as well as the development of targeted telephone, online and face-to-face intervention programs within school, primary care, mental health and drug treatment settings.
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Chris langmead
Professor (Research), Neuromedicines Discovery Centre (NDC), Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Victorian Heart Institute (VHI)
Chris has a strong interest in drug discovery, particularly in GPCRs as drug targets in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders, but also has interest in structure-function of GPCRs and analytical receptor pharmacology, with particular reference to allosteric interactions.
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Marie yap
NHMRC Career Development Fellow, Senior Research Fellow & Psychologist
Associate Professor Marie Yap has a longstanding interest in the importance of the family in children’s development, especially in terms of protecting young people from mental health problems. She is the lead investigator of the Parenting Strategies program which has been developed to provide parents with actionable strategies endorsed by research evidence and experts in the field to help them protect their child's mental health.
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Murat yucel
Former Professor (Research), Psychology
Professor Murat Yücel's research has made major contributions to understanding the long-term effects of heavy substance use on the brain and behaviour, the neurobiology of several psychiatric disorders, as well as the impact of drug use on mental health. Professor Yucel's discoveries have led to increased public and professional awareness on these topics and established his group at the forefront of addiction and psychiatric neuroscience research in Australia.
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Antonio verdejo-garcia
Professor (Research), Turner Institute For the Brain and Mental Health
Antonio's research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underpinning executive control and decision-making, and their implications for addiction and obesity.
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Kate seear
ARC Future Fellow
Kate is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2020 - ), a practising solicitor. At the time of writing for Monash Lens, she was an Associate Professor in Law at Monash University and the Academic Director of the Springvale Monash Legal Service. Kate's research is socio-legal and empirical in nature and typically explores connections between law, health, gender and the body.
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Dennis petrie
Associate Professor & ARC DECRA Fellow, Centre for Health Economics
Dennis has published extensively on the economics of illicit drugs and alcohol, economics of disability, economics of cancer, the longitudinal measurement and evaluation of health inequalities and has lead a large number of economic evaluations of healthcare interventions including alongside RCTs. He has consistently published in the top health economics journals, with multiple papers in the Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics and Social Science & Medicine. He specialises in analysing large and complex data sets to improve health policy decisions.
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