Loss and Frontal Striatal Reactivities Characterize Alcohol Use Severity and Rule-Breaking Behavior in Young Adult Drinkers

Appetitive and aversive cue reactivities differentiate biotypes of alcohol drinkers

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study to characterize individual differences in the physiological and neural mechanisms with respect to appetitive, aversive, or mixed nature of the psychological state during cue-evoked craving. The medial prefrontal cortex and VS showed appetitive responses and the AI, caudate and MCC showed aversive responses to alcohol cues, consistent with earlier findings (Galandra et al, 2018; Li et al, 2022; Pessiglione and Delgado, 2015; Zhornitsky et al, 2021). By distinguishing appetitive and aversive components of cue reactivity, we identified biotypes of alcohol drinkers, with the approach and avoidance biotype each showing higher appetitive and aversive activity, respectively, relative to the regression mean.…”

“…A human brain lesion study demonstrated that the AI was engaged in learning the negative values of loss cues and the dorsal striatum was involved in associative and motor aspects of decision-making to avoid the worst (Palminteri et al, 2012). In a recent study of Human Connectome Project, stronger neural responses in the caudate to punishment were associated with more severe alcohol use severity (Li et al, 2022). As a node in the cingulo-fronto-parietal network, the MCC is involved in avoidance, fear, and pain processing (Rolls, 2019).…”

Sex differences in externalizing and internalizing traits and ventral striatal responses to monetary loss

“…Although the current study focused on the VS, the literature has implicated the DS in externalizing and internalizing behavior (Konzok et al, 2021a;Lees et al, 2021;Li et al, 2022). Thus, we conducted the same analyses for the DS and its subregions -caudate, putamen, and pallidum -using masks from the AAL atlas and showed the bulk of the results in the Supplement.…”

“…Thus, we investigated whether the "positive" ndings described earlier, as shown in 3D and 3E, remained signi cant after accounting for alcohol use. HCP evaluated alcohol use with multiple questions and, as in our earlier work (Li et al, 2022;Li et al, 2021c), we conducted a principal component analysis of all drinking-related measures and identi ed a single, principal component (PC1) with an eigenvalue (7.42) > 1 and explaining 49.47% of the variance. With PC1 as an additional covariate to re ect the severity of alcohol use, the results showed that VS-loss β was correlated with externalizing score across men (r = 0.11, p = 0.017), but not all subjects (r = 0.04, p = 0.167) or women (r = -0.03, p = 0.516), and VS-loss β was not correlated with internalizing score across all (r = -0.03, p = 0.291), men (r = -0.03, p = 0.592) or women (r = -0.03, p = 0.560).…”

“…Men exhibited higher externalizing traits, including impulsivity, than women in the general population (Eaton et al, 2012;Fattore and Melis, 2016). Men relative to women also prevailed in the expression of externalizing traits, including physical aggression, violence, and antisocial behavior (Eme, 2015;Li et al, 2022). In the laboratory, male vs. female participants committed more no-go errors, suggesting higher impulsivity, in the go/no-go task both in adults (Saunders et al, 2008) and children (Liu et al, 2013).…”