Neurobiological bases of substance addictions and behavioral addictions.

Recent years research has increasingly unraveled the neurobiological processes underlying addictive behaviors. Of importance, these pathogenetic mechanisms are hypothesized to play a role in many, non-chemical, types of addictive behaviors. This has been most explicitly documented in the case of pathological gambling, which has been included recently into the section on addictive behaviors of the DSM5. For other types of behavioral disorders such as obesitas, online gaming, and ‘sex-addiction’ findings on their underlying neurobiological basis remain limited. Within the scope of this presentation an overview will be presented of the current state of the art reflecting the neurobiological basis of addictive behavior. Specifically the non-chemical types of addictive behavior will be focused.