Abnormalities in the brain may make some people more likely to become drug addicts

Abnormalities in the brain may make some people more likely to become drug addicts, according to scientists at the University of Cambridge.
They found the same differences in the brains of addicts and their non-addicted brothers and sisters.
The BBC’s Science Editor David Shukman was given access to the research.
[Video] Brains may be ‘wired’ for addiction (BBC) 2 February 2012
Full BBC Report and cited papers from Science 3 February 2012.

Abstract from the Science Journal: Addiction to drugs is a major contemporary public health issue, characterized by maladaptive behavior to obtain and consume an increasing amount of drugs at the expense of the individual’s health and social and personal life. We discovered abnormalities in fronto-striatal brain systems implicated in self-control in both stimulant-dependent individuals and their biological siblings who have no history of chronic drug abuse; these findings support the idea of an underlying neurocognitive endophenotype for stimulant drug addiction.