Neurobiology of Addiction, 1st Edition

George Koob

George F. Koob, Ph.D., is a Professor and Chair of the Committee on the Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders at The Scripps Research Institute and Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, and Adjunct Professor in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Koob received his Bachelor of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. in Behavioral Physiology from The Johns Hopkins University. An authority on addiction and stress, Dr. Koob has published over 670 scientific papers and has received continuous funding for his research from the National Institutes of Health, including the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). He is Director of the NIAAA Alcohol Research Center at The Scripps Research Institute, Consortium Coordinator for NIAAA's multi-center Integrative Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism, and Co-Director of the Pearson Center for Alcoholism and Addiction Research. Dr. Koob is Editor-in-Chief USA for the journal Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior and Editor-in-Chief for Journal of Addiction Medicine. He won the Daniel Efron Award for excellence in research from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, was honored as a Highly Cited Researcher from the Institute for Scientific Information, was presented with the Distinguished Investigator Award from the Research Society on Alcoholism, and won the Mark Keller Award from NIAAA. He received an honorary doctorate from Pennsylvania State University in 2009. Dr. Koob's research interests have been directed at the neurobiology of emotion, with a focus on the theoretical constructs of reward and stress. He has made contributions to our understanding of the anatomical connections of the emotional systems and the neurochemistry of emotional function. Dr. Koob has identified afferent and efferent connections of the basal forebrain (extended amygdala) in the region of the nucleus accumbens, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and central nucleus of the amygdala in motor activation, reinforcement mechanisms, behavioral responses to stress, drug self-administration, and the neuroadaptation associated with drug dependence. Dr. Koob also is one of the world’s authorities on the neurobiology of drug addiction. He has contributed to our understanding of the neurocircuitry associated with the acute reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse and more recently on the neuroadaptations of these reward circuits associated with the transition to dependence. He has validated key animal models for dependence associated with drugs of abuse and has begun to explore a key role of anti-reward systems in the development of dependence. Dr. Koob's work with the neurobiology of stress includes the characterization of behavioral functions in the central nervous system for catecholamines, opioid peptides, and corticotropin-releasing factor. Corticotropin-releasing factor, in addition to its classical hormonal functions in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, is also located in extrahypothalamic brain structures and may have an important role in brain emotional function. Recent use of specific corticotropin-releasing factor antagonists suggests that endogenous brain corticotropin-releasing factor may be involved in specific behavioral responses to stress, the psychopathology of anxiety and affective disorders, and drug addiction. Dr. Koob also has characterized functional roles for other stress-related neurotransmitters/neuroregulators such as norepinephrine, vasopressin, hypocretin (orexin), neuropeptide Y, and neuroactive steroids.

Affiliations and Expertise

Molecular and Integrative Neurosciences Department , The Scripps Institute, La Jolla, California, USA