Cocaine addiction: Diffusion tensor imaging study of the inferior frontal and anterior cingulate white matter

Structural brain markers are differentially associated with neurocognitive profiles in socially marginalized people with multimorbid illness.

“…This notion is highlighted by our recent work with a subset of subjects from the Hotel Study in which poorer FA was observed in frontal and interhemispheric tracts of subjects with cocaine-dependence and substance-induced psychosis, compared to those with cocaine-dependence alone (Willi et al, 2016). In this case, pre-existing aberrant neural circuitry may predispose individuals to psychosis following prolonged or heavy cocaine use -an illicit substance with well known adverse effects on frontal-subcortical white matter integrity (Lane et al, 2010;Romero et al, 2010). At the same time, persons may also be vulnerable to brain degradation as a result of white matter abnormalities that predate development of addiction, which is supported by findings from biological siblings of stimulant dependent persons (Ersche et al, 2012).…”

“…Specifically, dysfunction of the fronto-subcortical circuitry, namely connectivity of prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum, has been consistently linked with the development and maintenance of addiction (Everitt & Robbins, 2013;Koob & Volkow, 2010). Indeed, significant reductions in white matter integrity of major frontal and interhemispheric tracts are reliably observed in stimulant users (London, Kohno, Morales, & Ballard, 2015;Romero, Asensio, Palau, Sanchez, & Romero, 2010), opioid users (Wollman et al, 2015), alcohol users (Fortier et al, 2014), and polysubstance users (Unterrainer et al, 2015) compared to healthy controls. Moreover, longer duration of substance use is correlated with poorer white matter integrity (Ersche et al, 2012;Fortier et al, 2014;Wollman et al, 2015).…”

Diffusion tensor imaging of the structural integrity of white matter correlates with impulsivity in adolescents with internet gaming disorder

“…Additionally, a relationship between WM integrity and drug abuse has also been demonstrated. Negative correlations between greater impulsivity and the FA values of the anterior corpus callosum and frontal WM have been found in cocaine abusers (Moeller et al, 2005;Romero, Asensio, Palau, Sanchez, & Romero, 2010). These results indicate that the disrupted integrity of multiple WM regions plays an important role in mediating greater impulsivity in addictive conditions.…”

“…The previous studies revealed that behavioral addiction is similar to substance addiction in terms of neuropsychology and neurophysiology (Alavi et al, 2012). Therefore, we postulated that IGD, as a behavioral addiction, might also lead to the altered relationships between impulsivity and WM integrity as observed in other addictions (Fortier et al, 2014;Moeller et al, 2005;Romero et al, 2010).…”

Neurobiological substrate of smoking-related attentional bias

“…Furthermore, we demonstrated that brain activation related to attentional bias in the dACC cannot be attributed to other processes as a result of cue exposure. As converging evidence suggests that ACC dysfunction may be a biomarker for addiction (Goldstein et al, 2009b;Hong et al, 2009;Ma et al, 2010;Romero et al, 2010), it would be interesting to further investigate the differential contribution of the dorsal and ventral parts of the ACC in various specific task paradigms. It has also been hypothesized that dopamine plays an important role in attentional bias and craving (Franken, Booij, van den Brink 2005;Franken et al, 2004).…”