Dataset Information

Neural correlates of alcohol-approach bias in alcohol addiction: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak for spirits.

ABSTRACT: Behavioral studies have shown an alcohol-approach bias in alcohol-dependent patients: the automatic tendency to faster approach than avoid alcohol compared with neutral cues, which has been associated with craving and relapse. Although this is a well-studied psychological phenomenon, little is known about the brain processes underlying automatic action tendencies in addiction. We examined 20 alcohol-dependent patients and 17 healthy controls with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), while performing an implicit approach-avoidance task. Participants pushed and pulled pictorial cues of alcohol and soft-drink beverages, according to a content-irrelevant feature of the cue (landscape/portrait). The critical fMRI contrast regarding the alcohol-approach bias was defined as (approach alcohol>avoid alcohol)>(approach soft drink>avoid soft drink). This was reversed for the avoid-alcohol contrast: (avoid alcohol>approach alcohol)>(avoid soft drink>approach soft drink). In comparison with healthy controls, alcohol-dependent patients had stronger behavioral approach tendencies for alcohol cues than for soft-drink cues. In the approach, alcohol fMRI contrast patients showed larger blood-oxygen-level-dependent responses in the nucleus accumbens and medial prefrontal cortex, regions involved in reward and motivational processing. In alcohol-dependent patients, alcohol-craving scores were positively correlated with activity in the amygdala for the approach-alcohol contrast. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was not activated in the avoid-alcohol contrast in patients vs controls. Our data suggest that brain regions that have a key role in reward and motivation are associated with the automatic alcohol-approach bias in alcohol-dependent patients.

SUBMITTER: Wiers CE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3895246 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Neural correlates of alcohol-approach bias in alcohol addiction: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak for spirits.

Wiers Corinde E CE Stelzel Christine C Park Soyoung Q SQ Gawron Christiane K CK Ludwig Vera U VU Gutwinski Stefan S Heinz Andreas A Lindenmeyer Johannes J Wiers Reinout W RW Walter Henrik H Bermpohl Felix F

Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology 20130920 3

Behavioral studies have shown an alcohol-approach bias in alcohol-dependent patients: the automatic tendency to faster approach than avoid alcohol compared with neutral cues, which has been associated with craving and relapse. Although this is a well-studied psychological phenomenon, little is known about the brain processes underlying automatic action tendencies in addiction. We examined 20 alcohol-dependent patients and 17 healthy controls with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), whi ...[more]

PMID: 24060832

Similar Datasets

Project description:The attention of drug-dependent persons tends to be captured by stimuli associated with drug consumption. This involuntary cognitive process is considered as attentional bias (AB). AB has been hypothesized to have causal effects on drug abuse and drug relapse, but its underlying neural mechanisms are still unclear. This study investigated the neural basis of AB in abstinent heroin addicts (AHAs), combining event-related potential (ERP) analysis and source localization techniques. Electroencephalography data were collected in 21 abstinent heroin addicts and 24 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs) during a dot-probe task. In the task, a pair of drug-related image and neutral image was presented randomly in left and right side of the cross fixation, followed by a dot probe replacing one of the images. Behaviorally, AHAs had shorter reaction times (RTs) for the congruent condition compared to the incongruent condition, whereas this was not the case in the HCs. This finding demonstrated the presence of AB towards drug cues in AHAs. Furthermore, the image-evoked ERPs in AHAs had significant shorter P1 latency compared to HCs, as well as larger N1, N2, and P2 amplitude, suggesting that drug-related stimuli might capture attention early and overall require more attentional resources in AHAs. The target-related P3 had significantly shorter latency and lower amplitude in the congruent than incongruent condition in AHAs compared to HCs. Moreover, source localization of ERP components revealed increased activity for AHAs as compared to HCs in the dorsal posterior cingulate cortex (dPCC), superior parietal lobule and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) for image-elicited responses, and decreased activity in the occipital and the medial parietal lobes for target-elicited responses. Overall, the results of our study confirmed that AHAs may exhibit AB in drug-related contexts, and suggested that the bias might be related to an abnormal neural activity, both in early and late attention processing stages.

Dataset Information

Neural correlates of alcohol-approach bias in alcohol addiction: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak for spirits.

Publications

Neural correlates of alcohol-approach bias in alcohol addiction: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak for spirits.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets