Addiction

Fall 2016

Targeting the brain’s “bad opioids”

The stark reality of drug abuse hit home for Brendan Walker when two college classmates overdosed on heroin and Xanax. Their unsettling deaths steered Walker toward a career in the neuroscience of psychology and addictions.

Today, the associate professor of psychology and member of the Neuroscience Program at WSU is a leader in the study of alcohol and opioid drug dependence. His research is advancing the development of new pharmacotherapy treatments for addiction.

“Alcohol and abused opioids have a lot of similarity,” says Walker. “They both manipulate very powerful primitive systems in the brain that are critical for our motivation.”

One of those systems … » More …

Winter 2015

The Adderall Empire: A Life with ADHD and the Millennials’ Drug of Choice

Andrew K. Smith ’14

Booktrope: 2015

Smith’s memoir, The Adderall Empire, gives you a look into his life and struggle with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Diagnosed in late high school, Smith was prescribed Adderall and was catapulted into what he calls the “Adderall Empire.” This empire is a world in which Smith believes people lose their creative minds to the drug.

“Being inside the Adderall Empire is like being in a lighthouse across … » More …

Summer 2014

Sex, drugs, and differences

After decades of researching gender differences in the effects of drugs, Rebecca Craft has found that females using marijuana are likelier than men to become dependent on the drug and suffer more severe withdrawals.

At the same time, females seem to be more sensitive to the drug’s pain-relieving qualities.

Craft, a Washington State University psychology professor who studies the effects of psychoactive drugs on rats, has reported these findings most recently in journals such as Life Sciences and Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Her work, funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, focuses on the medical side of cannabinoids, the class of drugs … » More …

Summer 2010

Video: Jaak Panksepp on the brain and searching the web

Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp discusses how a simple web search can be driven by one of the brain’s most fundamental impulses.

Read what other WSU professors say about reading and thinking in the digital world in “Dear reader” in the Summer 2010 issue of Washington State Magazine.