Brain Anatomy
This part of the brain is responsible for executive functioning, impulse control, planning, and weighing long-term consequences.
What is the Prefrontal Cortex?
This neurotransmitter reinforces behaviors by signaling that something is important to remember and repeat, rather than simply creating pleasure.
What is Dopamine?
What is the scientific term for the brain's ability to reorganize, build new pathways, and heal through learning and experience?
What is Neuroplasticity?
True or False: Addiction affects only the brain's reward center.
What is False? It also affects decision-making, memory, stress, habits, body awareness, and survival systems.
Which brain structure stores memories that can later become addiction triggers?
What is the Hippocampus?
Explain why normal activities often feel boring during early recovery.
Repeated drug use reduces the brain's responsiveness to natural rewards, so everyday pleasures temporarily produce less motivation and satisfaction while the reward system heals.
Name four activities scientifically shown to help strengthen healthy brain pathways during recovery.
Examples include:
This brain structure is often called the body's "smoke detector" because it constantly scans for danger.
Amygdala
Match each brain part with its job:
Which brain system is responsible for turning repeated behaviors into automatic habits, making someone drive toward a liquor store almost without thinking?
What is the Basal Ganglia?
Why is consistency more important than perfection during recovery from a brain science perspective?
Repeated healthy behaviors strengthen new neural pathways. The brain changes through repetition, not through one perfect decision.
A recovering person smells cigarette smoke and immediately craves alcohol even though they have not thought about drinking all day.
Which two brain structures are most responsible?
The Hippocampus (memory) and Amygdala (emotional response).
Which two brain structures work together to create emotional memories that can become relapse triggers?
What is the Amygdala and the Hippocampus?
Explain how the reward system and decision-making system compete during addiction.
The reward system strongly pushes drug use through cravings and dopamine, while the prefrontal cortex tries to weigh consequences and stop impulsive decisions. Addiction weakens executive control, making cravings harder to resist.
List five healthy sources of dopamine that support recovery and explain why they are beneficial.
Examples include:
They promote healthy dopamine release without overstimulating the brain, helping restore the reward system over time.
A participant says:
"I don't even want the drug anymore. I just automatically found myself driving to my old dealer's neighborhood."
Identify the brain structure most responsible and explain why.
Basal Ganglia.
Repeated behaviors became automatic habits. Environmental cues triggered the brain's habit circuits before conscious decision-making fully engaged.