Drug addiction: What is salient behaviour? ?

Question

I was reading an article that discussed the evolutionary origins of drug addiction.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1174878#top

If you navigate to the above link read point #2 - drug distribution & use in ancient environments, you'll come across the term in the first sentence itself.

I just want to know what the author meant by the phrase, '...there was little overactivity of salient (wanting) behavior...'

Answer 1

in terms of the article presented neolithic man's primary concern was about where the next meal was coming from. "Salient" Desiring behavior for altered states during that time was left to the shaman in tribal entities..

As I read this:

causing no need for the adaptive development within the cortico-mesolimbic dopaminergic system of a built-in regulatory system of salience [6,11].

could it mean because of lack of societal development the organic functioning centers in the limbic area of the brain had not developed to make salient (desirous) behavior possible.

However when societies began to spring up, in Meso America, and the middle east, food production practices, lead to "free time" and, this free time allowed for experimentation. ??

Just my thoughts on the article. I don't believe addiction occured until the post neolithic age with the advent of agriculture.. I think priorities changed when man settled into community. I think the hunter gatherer society primary concern left the 'drug experimentation" to the shamanic person..

One thing I noted, that in the author's conclusion he indicates addiction in mammalian society, I think that is an overgeneralizations and somewhat over-reaching, as the class "mammalia" covers a much larger group of species then homo sapiens. I tend to think the reward and addiction behavior is limited to primate brain with more extensive pre-frontal, and limbic system development.

I grew up around farm animal and I've seen a stoned shorthorn bull, who was busy grazing the marijuana, he went and slept off the effects of the weed and went back to the business of being a bull, rather then going back to the weed patch. Some species maybe about to sense the effect, but the reward mechanism via limbic development does not exist in the lower species, the reward mechanism is what drives the addictive processes.

Answer 2

Here the authour tries to explain about the basic craving nature underlying addiction. According to mordern science, the craving (wanting) behavior is a build in mechanism which depends on the award- reward circuits in brain. The award- reward circuits works on the principles of reinforcement a cocept given by skinner in social sciences. There was little over activity of craving behavior means, due to the minimal exposure of such drugs  in ancient times, the award- reward circuit was not well developed as its developement depends on continuous  exposure to various such drugs through generations.Hope u understand.