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Studies of compulsive drug craving in animals and cocaine-abusing humans have shown that stressors and drug-related stimuli produce similar neural arousal and that exposure to such stimuli is associated with increased activity in the striatum and associated areas. These investigators used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study neural arousal in 30 abstinent cocaine-dependent individuals (16 women) and 36 similarly aged, healthy controls (18 women).
Scripts with specific stress, drug/alcohol cues, and neutral imagery were developed for each participant. Upon exposure to the imagery, regional corticostriatal-limbic activation (involving striatum, insula, and anterior and posterior cingulate) increased in cocaine-dependent women more th…