CDART's Missions

  • The primary scientific mission of CDART is to determine how environmental context affects inter- and intra-individual differences that are important in drug abuse vulnerability. Our past work has concentrated on individual differences in sensation seeking as a predictor of drug abuse vulnerability. In the current phase of the center, we have broken down sensation seeking into two different separable constructs, namely reward seeking and inhibition. Reward seeking and inhibition are thought to involve different neurobiological mechanisms, each which contributes to drug abuse vulnerability. A major goal is to understand how anti-drug media messages are attended to and processed by individuals who differ in reward seeking and inhibition.
  • The Center also seeks to facilitate the translation of research findings between the basic and prevention sciences using a multidisciplinary approach. For example, our basic research in rats and humans has suggested that highly novel stimulus materials may serve as nondrug alternative reinforcers that compete with drug taking. In addition, our past prevention research has suggested that high and low sensation seekers process televised anti-drug public service announcements differently, perhaps due to biologically-based traits that can be evaluated in basic research laboratories. A long-term goal of our Center is to design a biologically-relevant prevention intervention tailored to individuals high in reward seeking and/or low in inhibition that can be evaluated in the field.