Subjective Responses to Alcohol in the Lab Predict Neural Responses to Alcohol Cues

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Objective: Subjective responses to alcohol represent a biologically based, genetically moderated, and clinically informative marker of alcoholism risk; however, the physiology underlying this phenotype remains unclear. This study tested whether subjective responses during alcohol administration predict neural responses to alcohol cues in the scanner and whether these neural responses differ between OPRM1 genotypes. Method: Twenty alcohol-dependent individuals were recruited (10 G-allele carriers; 6 women; M age = 29.4) for a within-subjects alcohol administration in the laboratory and a functional magnetic resonance imaging session consisting of an alcohol taste cues task. Laboratory assessments of alcohol high, liking, craving, and positive and negative reinforcement during alcohol administration were entered as predictors of neural response to the presentation of alcohol cues versus water cues in the scanner and further tested for OPRM1 genotype moderation (whole-brain cluster-corrected at Z > 1.96, p < .05). Results: Alcohol craving during alcohol administration predicted less neural activity, whereas alcohol reinforcement predicted greater neural activity to alcohol cues versus water cues in regions including the precuneus, posterior cingulate gyrus, and lingual gyrus. Alcohol high predicted greater neural activity to alcohol cues in regions including the precuneus and anterior cingulate cortex. OPRM1 genotype was found to moderate these relationships. No results were observed for alcohol liking. Conclusions: This study provides initial evidence that subjective responses to alcohol, namely craving, high, and the reinforcing properties of alcohol, predict neural markers of alcohol cue reactivity. These results support the validity of laboratory and neuroimaging measures of subjective responses to alcohol and offer an integration of these methods in a sample of alcoholdependent individuals. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 75, 124-135, 2014)

The Effects of Pharmacological Opioid Blockade on Neural Measures of Drug Cue-Reactivity in Humans

“…It is possible that the 3-day dosing duration was not long enough for naltrexone to establish its full opioid blockade effect; thus the duration of dosing could potentially explain the absence of naltrexone-induced modulations of ventral striatum activation (and VTA activation at the whole-brain level of analysis) and measures of self-reported craving in the present study. However, the absence of naltrexone-related reductions in self-reported craving may also be related to the craving assessment procedure used (ie, phasic measurement of craving with a single item during scanning) as other studies have observed a benefit of using expanded item and response sets for the detection of drug craving correlations with neural measures of cue-reactivity (Courtney and Ray, 2014b). Further, previous studies have demonstrated complete hydromorphone blockade following a single dose of naltrexone (25 or 100 mg; Preston and Bigelow, 1993;Schuh et al, 1999) and others have observed reductions in alcohol and drug craving following 3-day dosing of naltrexone (Ray and Hutchison, 2007), suggesting that the measurement limitation theory may be a more viable explanation for the lack of naltrexone-related tonic craving reductions observed in the present study.…”

Smells like inhibition: The effects of olfactory and visual alcohol cues on inhibitory control

“…Exposure to substance-related cues and environments has also been found to be related to changes in alcohol consumption (Monk et al 2015 ), as well as related cognitions (Monk and Heim 2013a , b , 2014 ), relapse (e.g. Carter and Tiffany 1999 ; Marlatt 1990 ; Siegel 2005 ; Zironi et al 2006 ) and craving (Conklin and Tiffany 2002 ; Courtney and Ray 2014 ; Modell and Mountz 1995 ).…”

Investigating dimensionality and measurement bias of DSM-5 alcohol use disorder in a representative sample of the largest metropolitan area in South America

“…Considering that the Craving criterion was not included in the three studies above-cited (Kuerbis et al, 2013;McBride et al, 2011;Shmulewitz et al, 2010) our study was the second to validate the inclusion of this criterion within the DSM-5 AUD, in a non-U.S. large representative sample, and the first in a middle-income country. As stated by some authors (Keyes et al, 2011;Pombo et al, 2014;Courtney and Ray, 2014;Leggio, 2009), the support for the validity of craving as a component of alcohol addiction also comes from other research fields such as behavioral research, imaging, pharmacology, and genetic epidemiology.…”