From bedside to bench and back again: A 30-year saga

My work (Mark S. Gold) began in the 70s looking for the mechanisms of drug reinforcement and withdrawal. Through observation and experience, drugs of abuse and the drive for food appeared to be quite related. As pioneered by Bart Hoebel, food can become an object of desire and act in most respects as a drug of abuse. The Gold lab is investigating working models for pathological attachment to eating and food addiction. New pharmacological treatments which interfere with food reinforcement may be the next step.

Research highlights
► Clinicians look to researchers for laboratory models and testable hypotheses.
► Withdrawal and abstinence similarities.
► Food, sugar and addiction recovery.
► Rat model of binge eating on sugar and sugar/fat solutions.
► Reward, relapse, and common hedonic mechanisms