The Protective Effect of Social Reward on Opioid and Psychostimulant Reward and Relapse: Behavior, Pharmacology, and Brain Regions

In this review, we propose that incorporating social factors into modern neuroscience research on addiction could improve mechanistic accounts of addiction and help close gaps in translating discovery to treatment. We first summarize rodent studies on behavioral, pharmacological, and circuit mechanisms of the protective effect of both traditional experimenter-controlled and newer operant social-interaction procedures. We then discuss potential future directions and clinical implications.