Recreational drugs on transmission process in CNS

What are recreational drugs and what do people do with them and give examples?

• Substances used for personal enjoyment , they alter brain function which changes our mood, perception and conscious experience

• Like caffeine , nicotine, alcohol, cocaine etc.

What is the reward pathway and what does it do

When the reward pathway is activated , it causes us to feel a pleasant/ rewarding feeling

• encouraging us to repeat the behaviour that activated that pathway

• Drugs hijack this reward system and and produce pleasurable feelings without any function

What is the dopamine system

Pathway in the brain which operates on dopamine, the release of which leads to feeling of reward

Nucleus accumbes

An area of the midbrain associated with the brains reward systems

Ventral tegmental

Area of midbrain associated with the brains reward system an d origin of dopaminergic activity