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Editorial: Rethinking addiction: technological advances, mechanistic insights, and the re-evaluation of substance use disorders

Year: 2026

Type: editorial

Abstract: Addiction research has entered an era of rapid conceptual advances seeded by recent methodological 13These advances have the field of addiction neuroscience from broad descriptions 14 of altered reward processing toward increasingly granular accounts of the circuits, cellular populations, 15 molecular mechanisms, and behavioral processes that underwrite substance use disorders (SUDs) 16 (Venniro et al., 2020;Mathis et al., 2025a;Nestler, 2025). At the same time, the concept of addiction 17 itself has expanded from an exclusive focus on impact of psychotropic drugs to encapsulating 18 problematic behavioral patterns like gambling, sex, screen time, and food intake. This expansion raises 19 many important questions, including: What exactly defines addiction? Do all forms of addiction stem 20 of pathological patterns of activity within overlapping, or distinct, brain circuit mechanisms? This 21Research Topic was conceived at the intersection of these developments. As highlighted by the studies included in this special issue, new vistas in addiction research require the 77 field move beyond emphasizing effects on singular behavioral and neural endpoints. Food and drugs, 78 for example, engage overlapping motivational systems, but feeding is also embedded within metabolic 79 regulation and physiological homeostasis. Therefore, problematic eating behaviors necessarily 80 manifest in a manner that will have overlapping, and unique, behavioral and mechanistic underpinnings 81 relative to psychoactive drugs. It's important to acknowledge these domain specific nuances, as well 82 as that not every reward-based behavior necessarily leads to addiction. Indeed, true progress will likely 83 require a greater, field-wide acknowledgement of the complex interplay of environmental, cognitive, 84 neurochemical, and genetic predispositions that seed addiction in certain individuals. 85 86The contributions to this Research Topic highlight three complementary shifts that are increasingly 87 shaping addiction research: from static measures to dynamic trajectories, from isolated brain circuits 88 to interacting biological systems, and from substance-centered definitions to mechanistically informed 89 models of maladaptive behavior. 90 91The future of addiction research will not be defined solely by our ability to measure more molecules, 92 record more neurons, or quantify more behavioral dimensions. Its progress will depend on our ability 93 to use these technologies to ask better questions and improve our analysis and interpretation. 94Rethinking addiction therefore does not necessarily mean expanding its definition. It may instead mean 95 refining it: identifying when, why, and for whom a behavior becomes persistent, maladaptive, and 96 difficult to control. This conceptual refinement, supported by increasingly sophisticated technologies 97 and integrative approaches, may ultimately provide a stronger foundation for more precise diagnosis, 98 prevention, and treatment.

Source: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2026.2009605

Authors: Emmanuel Darcq, W. Matt Howe, Celine Nicolas, Victor Philippe Mathis