title: What is abnormal about addiction-related attentional biases?
abstract: The phenotype of addiction includes prominent attentional biases for drug cues, which play a role in motivating drug-seeking behavior and contribute to relapse. In a separate line of research, arbitrary stimuli have been shown to automatically capture attention when previously associated with reward in non-clinical samples.
  
  
  
  Here, I argue that these two attentional biases reflect the same cognitive process. I outline five characteristics that exemplify attentional biases for drug cues: resistant to conflicting goals, robust to extinction, linked to dorsal striatal dopamine and to biases in approach behavior, and can distinguish between individuals with and without a history of drug dependence. I then go on to describe how attentional biases for arbitrary reward-associated stimuli share all of these features, and conclude by arguing that the attentional components of addiction reflect a normal cognitive process that promotes reward-seeking behavior.
authors: Texas A&M University, Department of Psychology, 4235 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4235, United States. Electronic address: brian.anderson@tamu.edu.
authors: Brian A
authors: BA
authors: Anderson
mesh_terms: D000070379:Attentional Bias; D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D003463:Cues; D004298:Dopamine / Q000502:physiology; D058999:Drug-Seeking Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology; D012201:Reward
chemical_list: D004298:Dopamine
keywords: Addiction; Drug cues; Incentive salience; Reward learning; Selective attention