ReviewNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2021
Addiction as a brain disease revised: why it still matters, and the need for consilience.
Review in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT07001371 (Emotional Brain Training for Addiction Medicine Treatment - A Pilot Study), which is not on this map. Cited by 97 papers, 8 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Emotional Brain Training for Addiction Medicine Treatment - A Pilot Study
Who cites it
97 citing papers in PubMed, 8 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 258 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evaluating Reduced Use and Abstinence as Outcomes in Pharmacotherapy Trials for Stimulant Use Disorder: A Meta-Analysis of 12 Randomized Controlled Trials.JAMA psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Brain Structural Abnormalities in Addiction Disorders: Transdiagnostic Meta-Analyses.Human brain mapping · 2026Pooled it
- Efficacy of intermittent theta-burst stimulation for substance use disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized sham-controlled trials.Frontiers in neurology · 2026Pooled it
- Combined pharmacological and psychosocial interventions for alcohol use disorder.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2025Pooled it
- A systematic review and meta-analysis on the transcriptomic signatures in alcohol use disorder.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Interventions to improve pharmacists' competency in chronic disease management: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials.BMC medical education · 2024Pooled it
- Functional genomic mechanisms of opioid action and opioid use disorder: a systematic review of animal models and human studies.Molecular psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Internet Addiction and Its Associated Factors Among African High School and University Students: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- Engagement in alcohol-free activities, community-level economic disadvantage, and heavy drinking following alcohol treatment.Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior · 2026Trial
- Does a Survivorship Model of Opioid Use Disorder Improve Public Stigma or Policy Support? A General Population Randomized Experiment.Journal of general internal medicine · 2023Trial
- Acute effects of alcohol on social and personal decision making.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Addiction management and rehabilitation programs in Saudi Arabia: a scoping review of current practices and opportunities for healthcare technology integration.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2026Article
- GLP-1-targeted therapies for alcohol and other substance use disorders: a new era on the horizon?The Journal of clinical investigation · 2026Article
- A manifesto for theoretical innovation.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Article
- Diagnostic validity of Addictions Neuroclinical Assessment indices for alcohol use disorder: Findings from an observational case-control study.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Observational
- The neurobiological cravings signature (NCS) as a predictive neuromarker of clinical outcomes in alcohol use disorder.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Association of acute opioid-induced euphoria and analgesia with subsequent opioid prescriptions in an emergency department-based prospective cohort study.Clinical and experimental emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Anterior Insula Activity during Alcohol and Social Reward Self-Administration and Choice in Male and Female Rats.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Sexual minority (LGBQ+) women's experiences of accessing addiction services: a qualitative study.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- A machine learning approach with SHAP interpretability for classifying drug craving levels.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
37 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 6 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The view that substance addiction is a brain disease, although widely accepted in the neuroscience community, has become subject to acerbic criticism in recent years. These criticisms state that the brain disease view is deterministic, fails to account for heterogeneity in remission and recovery, places too much emphasis on a compulsive dimension of addiction, and that a specific neural signature of addiction has not been identified. We acknowledge that some of these criticisms have merit, but assert that the foundational premise that addiction has a neurobiological basis is fundamentally sound. We also emphasize that denying that addiction is a brain disease is a harmful standpoint since it contributes to reducing access to healthcare and treatment, the consequences of which are catastrophic. Here, we therefore address these criticisms, and in doing so provide a contemporary update of the brain disease view of addiction. We provide arguments to support this view, discuss why apparently spontaneous remission does not negate it, and how seemingly compulsive behaviors can co-exist with the sensitivity to alternative reinforcement in addiction. Most importantly, we argue that the brain is the biological substrate from which both addiction and the capacity for behavior change arise, arguing for an intensified neuroscientific study of recovery. More broadly, we propose that these disagreements reveal the need for multidisciplinary research that integrates neuroscientific, behavioral, clinical, and sociocultural perspectives.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.