The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in addiction disorders

Recently a significant conceptual change emerged in the interpretation of addictological disorders. Despite this significant progress, the exact neuronal mechanisms of these disorders are still unknown. By the development of cognitive neuroscience novel clinical tests became available which are devoted to the evaluation of more properly defined neuronal structures. These novel approaches are designed to separately investigate memory/attention-related and affective processes in decision-making. These investigations along with animal models and functional neuroimaging approaches suggest the crucial role of a complex neuronal network in the pathomechanism of addictological disorders, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala-accumbens system. The aim of this paper is to review these novel findings in order to gain insight into the neurocognitive mechanisms of addictological disorders.