Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have recently uncovered insights into how specific brain pathways influence cocaine addiction. The study, published in Neuropharmacology, found that dopamine signaling from the ventral tegmental area (a brain region associated with reward) to the basolateral amygdala (a region critical for associative learning) plays an important role in how individuals learn to associate environmental cues with cocaine’s effects. The new study aimed to examine the brain mechanisms that make certain environmental cues trigger drug-seeking behaviors in individuals wit…