striatum (VS), a key reward region, showed increased activation for alcohol-related cues, but decreased activation for monetary gain in detoxified alcoholics, relative to healthy controls, suggesting differential activation of VS in response to the type of reward. Both animal and human studies have revealed that chronic administration of addictive substances results in neuroadaptations in reward structures, especially in the midbrain dopaminergic areas (e.g., VTA, substantia nigra), as well as the structures to which they project (e.g., NAc) [17,18].
