Cited by 439Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on BehaviorMemory and Neural MechanismsNeural and Behavioral Psychology Studies

Addictive drugs as reinforcers: multiple partial actions on memory systems

WHITE, NORMAN M.·1996·Addiction

Abstract

This review applies some new experimental findings and theoretical ideas about how reinforcers act on the neural mechanisms of learning and memory to the problem of how addictive drugs affect behaviour. A basic assumption of this analysis is that all changes in behaviour, including those involved in drug addiction and the initiation of drug self-administration, require the storage of new information in the nervous system. Animal studies suggest that such information is processed in several (this review deals with three) more or less independent learning and memory systems in the mammalian brain. Reinforcers can interact with these systems in three ways: they activate neural substrates of observable approach or escape responses, they produce unobservable internal states that can be perceived as rewarding or aversive, and they modulate or enhance the information stored in each of the memory systems. It is suggested that each addictive drug maintains its own self-administration by mimicking some subset of these actions. Evidence supporting the notion of multiple memory systems and data on the actions of several drugs (amphetamine, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol and morphine) on these systems are briefly reviewed. The utility of the concept of "reward" for understanding the effects of drugs on behaviour is discussed. Evidence demonstrating actions of drugs on multiple neural substrates of reinforcement suggests that no single factor is likely to explain either addictive behaviour in general or self-administration in particular. Some of the findings on the development and maintenance of self-administration by animals of the five exemplar drugs are discussed in the context of these ideas.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1996.tb03586.x

Cites

269 of 269 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Other frameworks that emphasize multiple parallel memory systems in the brain allow behavioral flexibility.

    “Other frameworks that emphasize multiple parallel memory systems in the brain (e.g., Gruber & McDonald, 2012; McDonald & White, 1993; White, 1996) also allow behavioral flexibility.”

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
WHITE, N. M.
Affiliations
McGill University (CA)
Corresponding author
WHITE, NORMAN M.
Venue
Addiction
Publisher
Wiley
Published
1996-07
Volume
91
Issue
7
Pages
921-950
ISSN
  • 0965-2140 (ISSN-L)
  • 1360-0443
OpenAlex
W2135546946
Cited by
439
References
269
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 18
FWCI
2.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Addiction (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
Keywords
drugs of abuse, reinforcement, memory systems, self-administration, reward, learning and memory, amphetamine, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, morphine, aversive stimuli
MeSH terms
Ethanol, Amphetamines, Animals, Behavior, Animal, Brain, Cocaine, Hippocampus, Learning, Memory, Morphine, Nicotine, Reinforcement, Psychology, Self Administration

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review