Olsen CM, Natural rewards, neuroplasticity, and non-drug addictions, in Neuropharmacology, vol. 61, n. 7, December 2011, pp. 1109–1122, DOI:10.1016/j.neuropharm.2011.03.010, PMC 3139704, PMID 21459101.
«Functional neuroimaging studies in humans have shown that gambling (Breiter et al, 2001), shopping (Knutson et al, 2007), orgasm (Komisaruk et al, 2004), playing video games (Koepp et al, 1998; Hoeft et al, 2008) and the sight of appetizing food (Wang et al, 2004a) activate many of the same brain regions (i.e., the mesocorticolimbic system and extended amygdala) as drugs of abuse (Volkow et al, 2004). ... As described for food reward, sexual experience can also lead to activation of plasticity-related signaling cascades. ... In some people, there is a transition from “normal” to compulsive engagement in natural rewards (such as food or sex), a condition that some have termed behavioral or non-drug addictions (Holden, 2001; Grant et al., 2006a). ... the transcription factor delta FosB is increased during access to high fat diet (Teegarden and Bale, 2007) or sucrose (Wallace et al, 2008). ...To date, there is very little data directly measuring the effects of food on synaptic plasticity in addiction-related neurocircuitry. ... Following removal of sugar or fat access, withdrawal symptoms including anxiety- and depressive-like behaviors emerge (Colantuoni et al, 2002; Teegarden and Bale, 2007). After this period of “abstinence”, operant testing reveals “craving” and “seeking” behavior for sugar (Avena et al, 2005) or fat (Ward et al, 2007), as well as “incubation of craving” (Grimm et al, 2001; Lu et al, 2004; Grimm et al, 2005), and “relapse” (Nair et al, 2009b) following abstinence from sugar. In fact, when given a re-exposure to sugar after a period of abstinence, animals consume a much greater amount of sugar than during previous sessions (Avena et al., 2005).»
"