Consciousness and Loss of Free Will in Addictions

Addiction is a complex disorder that lies at the intersection of neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy. While significant progress has been made in identifying the neurobiological mechanisms underlying addictive behaviours, a key question remains insufficiently explored: how addiction alters consciousness and constrains free will. Psychoactive substances can profoundly affect perception, emotional regulation, cognition, time experience, and behavioural control. Individuals with substance use disorders often operate within distorted motivational and perceptual frameworks, in which actions become increasingly driven by compulsive processes rather than reflective choice.Importantly, addiction is not limited to substance use. Behavioural addictions—including gambling disorder, gaming disorder, and compulsive internet use—can produce similar patterns of compulsivity, impaired decision-making, and diminished self-regulation despite the absence of exogenous intoxication. These parallels suggest that alterations in conscious experience and volitional control may arise from core addictive mechanisms rather than pharmacological effects alone.This Research Topic aims to advance a multidimensional understanding of how addiction reshapes conscious processes and constrains free will. Addiction is associated with a range of neurocognitive alterations, including narrowing of attentional focus towards addiction-related cues, distortions in time perception and future-oriented thinking, altered reward valuation, compromised executive control, and reduced integration of reflective self-awareness in decision-making. However, the specific components of consciousness affected—such as self-awareness, intentionality, temporal integration, and evaluative judgement—remain insufficiently delineated. Similarly, the degree to which agency and volitional control are impaired may vary across different types, stages, and severities of addiction, and the underlying neural and computational mechanisms require further clarification.By bringing together interdisciplinary contributions from neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, cognitive science, computational modelling, and philosophy of mind, this Research Topic seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how addictive disorders influence conscious experience and decision-making. Clarifying these mechanisms may help inform addiction treatment strategies, improve approaches to relapse prevention and recovery, and contribute to broader public health discussions surrounding responsibility, policy, and the societal impact of addictive behaviours.Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:• Identification of specific components of consciousness altered in different forms of addiction;• Neural substrates of agency, volitional control, and compulsivity in addictive disorders;• Frontostriatal, salience network, and dopaminergic mechanisms underlying impaired autonomy;• Time perception, valuation processes, and future discounting in addiction;• Comparative analyses of substance-related versus behavioural addictions;• Computational and reinforcement learning models of compulsive decision-making;• Philosophical and conceptual analyses of free will, autonomy, and responsibility in addiction;• Neuroethical implications of diminished agency in addictive disorders;• Biomarkers or neuroimaging approaches linking altered conscious processes to clinical outcomes;• Interventions aimed at restoring reflective control and conscious self-regulation. Topic editors: Rajendra D Badgaiyan, Igor Elman Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79986/consciousness-and-loss-of-free-will-in-addictions