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Gender effects in alcohol dependence: an fMRI pilot study examining affective processing.

ABSTRACT: Alcohol dependence (AD) has global effects on brain structure and function, including frontolimbic regions regulating affective processing. Preliminary evidence suggests alcohol blunts limbic response to negative affective stimuli and increases activation to positive affective stimuli. Subtle gender differences are also evident during affective processing.Fourteen abstinent AD individuals (8 F, 6 M) and 14 healthy controls (9 F, 5 M), ages 23 to 60, were included in this facial affective processing functional magnetic resonance imaging pilot study. Whole-brain linear regression analyses were performed, and follow-up analyses examined whether AD status significantly predicted depressive symptoms and/or coping.Fearful Condition-The AD group demonstrated reduced activation in the right medial frontal gyrus, compared with controls. Gender moderated the effects of AD in bilateral inferior frontal gyri. Happy Condition-AD individuals had increased activation in the right thalamus. Gender moderated the effects of AD in the left caudate, right middle frontal gyrus, left paracentral lobule, and right lingual gyrus. Interactive AD and gender effects for fearful and happy faces were such that AD men activated more than control men, but AD women activated less than control women. Enhanced coping was associated with greater activation in right medial frontal gyrus during fearful condition in AD individuals.Abnormal affective processing in AD may be a marker of alcoholism risk or a consequence of chronic alcoholism. Subtle gender differences were observed, and gender moderated the effects of AD on neural substrates of affective processing. AD individuals with enhanced coping had brain activation patterns more similar to controls. Results help elucidate the effects of alcohol, gender, and their interaction on affective processing.

SUBMITTER: Padula CB

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5303611 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Gender effects in alcohol dependence: an fMRI pilot study examining affective processing.

Padula Claudia B CB Anthenelli Robert M RM Eliassen James C JC Nelson Erik E Lisdahl Krista M KM

Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research 20150201 2

<h4>Background</h4>Alcohol dependence (AD) has global effects on brain structure and function, including frontolimbic regions regulating affective processing. Preliminary evidence suggests alcohol blunts limbic response to negative affective stimuli and increases activation to positive affective stimuli. Subtle gender differences are also evident during affective processing.<h4>Methods</h4>Fourteen abstinent AD individuals (8 F, 6 M) and 14 healthy controls (9 F, 5 M), ages 23 to 60, were includ ...[more]

PMID: 25684049

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Project description:AimsTo describe gender differences in alcohol consumption, purchasing preferences and alcohol-attributable harm. To model the effects of alcohol pricing policies on male and female consumption and hospitalizations.DesignEpidemiological simulation using the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model version 4.Setting and participantsAdults aged 18+ years, England.InterventionsThree alcohol pricing policies: 10% duty increase and minimum unit prices (MUP) of £0.50 and £0.70 per UK unit.MeasuresGender-specific baseline and key outcomes data: annual beverage-specific units of alcohol consumed and beverage-specific alcohol expenditure (household surveys). Alcohol-attributable hospital admissions (administrative data). Key model parameters: literature-based own- and cross-price elasticities for 10 beverage-by-location categories (e.g. off-trade beer). Sensitivity analysis with new gender-specific elasticities. Literature-based risk functions linking consumption and harm, gender-disaggregated where evidence was available. Population subgroups: 120 subgroups defined by gender (primary focus), age, deprivation quintile and baseline weekly consumption.FindingsWomen consumed 59.7% of their alcohol as off-trade wine while men consumed 49.7% as beer. Women drinkers consumed fewer units annually than men (494 versus 895) and a smaller proportion of women were high-risk drinkers (4.8 versus 7.2%). Moderate drinking women had lower hospital admission rates than men (44 versus 547 per 100 000), but rates were similar for high-risk drinking women and men (14 294 versus 13 167 per 100 000). All three policies led to larger estimated reductions in consumption and admission rates among men than women. For example, a £0.50 MUP led to a 5.3% reduction in consumption and a 4.1% reduction in admissions for men but a 0.7% reduction in consumption and a 1.6% reduction in hospitalizations for women.ConclusionAlcohol consumption, purchasing preferences and harm show strong gender patterns among adult drinkers in England. Alcohol pricing policies are estimated to be more effective at reducing consumption and harm for men than women.

Project description:INTRODUCTION: With the progression of substance dependence, drug cue-related brain activation is thought to shift from motivational towards habit pathways. However, a direct association between cue-induced brain activation and dependence duration has not yet been shown. We therefore examined the relationship between alcohol cue-reactivity in the brain, cue-induced subjective craving and alcohol dependence duration and severity. Since alcohol dependence is highly comorbid with depression/anxiety, which may modulate brain responses to alcohol cues, we also examined the relation between comorbid depression/anxiety and cue-reactivity. METHODS: We compared 30 alcohol dependent patients with 15 healthy controls and 15 depression/anxiety patients during a visual alcohol cue-reactivity task using functional magnetic resonance imaging blood oxygenated level-dependent responses and subjective craving as outcomes. Within the alcohol dependent group we correlated cue-reactivity with alcohol dependence severity and duration, with cue-induced craving and with depression/anxiety levels. RESULTS: Alcohol dependent patients showed greater cue-reactivity in motivational brain pathways and stronger subjective craving than depression/anxiety patients and healthy controls. Depression/anxiety was not associated with cue-reactivity, but depression severity in alcohol dependent patients was positively associated with craving. Within alcohol dependence, longer duration of alcohol dependence was associated with stronger cue-related activation of the posterior putamen, a structure involved in habits, whereas higher alcohol dependence severity was associated with lower cue-reactivity in the anterior putamen, an area implicated in goal-directed behavior preceding habit formation. CONCLUSION: Cue-reactivity in alcohol dependence is not modulated by comorbid depression or anxiety. More importantly, the current data confirm the hypothesis of a ventral to dorsal striatal shift of learning processes with longer dependence duration, which could underlie increasingly habitual substance use with progressing substance dependence.

Project description:BackgroundOur previous work characterized altered cerebral activations during cognitive control in individuals with alcohol dependence (AD). A hallmark of cognitive control is the ability to anticipate changes and adjust behavior accordingly. Here, we employed a Bayesian model to describe trial-by-trial anticipation of the stop signal and modeled fMRI signals of conflict anticipation in a stop signal task. Our goal is to characterize the neural correlates of conflict anticipation and its relationship to response inhibition and alcohol consumption in AD.MethodsTwenty-four AD and 70 age and gender matched healthy control individuals (HC) participated in the study. fMRI data were pre-processed and modeled with SPM8. We modeled fMRI signals at trial onset with individual events parametrically modulated by estimated probability of the stop signal, p(Stop), and compared regional responses to conflict anticipation between AD and HC. To address the link to response inhibition, we regressed whole-brain responses to conflict anticipation against the stop signal reaction time (SSRT).ResultsCompared to HC (54/70), fewer AD (11/24) showed a significant sequential effect - a correlation between p(Stop) and RT during go trials - and the magnitude of sequential effect is diminished, suggesting a deficit in proactive control. Parametric analyses showed decreased learning rate and over-estimated prior mean of the stop signal in AD. In fMRI, both HC and AD responded to p(Stop) in bilateral inferior parietal cortex and anterior pre-supplementary motor area, although the magnitude of response increased in AD. In contrast, HC but not AD showed deactivation of the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC). Furthermore, deactivation of the pgACC to increasing p(Stop) is positively correlated with the SSRT in HC but not AD. Recent alcohol consumption is correlated with increased activation of the thalamus and cerebellum in AD during conflict anticipation.ConclusionsThe current results highlight altered proactive control that may serve as an additional behavioral and neural marker of alcohol dependence.

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Gender effects in alcohol dependence: an fMRI pilot study examining affective processing.

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Gender effects in alcohol dependence: an fMRI pilot study examining affective processing.

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