Pavlovian-To-Instrumental Transfer and Alcohol Consumption in Young Male Social Drinkers: Behavioral, Neural and Polygenic Correlates

Journal of Clinical Medicine

Maria Garbusow¹  Henrik Walter¹  Miriam Sebold¹  Florian Schlagenhauf¹  Stephan Ripke¹  Andreas Heinz¹  DanielJ. Schad¹  Eva Friedel¹  IlyaM. Veer¹  Stephan Nebe²  Christian Sommer²  MichaelN. Smolka²  QuentinJ. M. Huys³  Sören Kuitunen-Paul⁴  Hans-Ulrich Wittchen⁴  MichaelA. Rapp⁵ 

[1] Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany;Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, 01307 Dresden, Germany;Division of Psychiatry and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK;Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, 01187 Dresden, Germany;Social and Preventive Medicine, Area of Excellence Cognitive Sciences, University of Potsdam, 14469 Potsdam, Germany;

关键词: Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer;    amygdala;    alcohol;    polygenic risk;    high risk drinkers;   

DOI  :  10.3390/jcm8081188

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In animals and humans, behavior can be influenced by irrelevant stimuli, a phenomenon called Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT). In subjects with substance use disorder, PIT is even enhanced with functional activation in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and amygdala. While we observed enhanced behavioral and neural PIT effects in alcohol-dependent subjects, we here aimed to determine whether behavioral PIT is enhanced in young men with high-risk compared to low-risk drinking and subsequently related functional activation in an a-priori region of interest encompassing the NAcc and amygdala and related to polygenic risk for alcohol consumption. A representative sample of 18-year old men (n = 1937) was contacted: 445 were screened, 209 assessed: resulting in 191 valid behavioral, 139 imaging and 157 genetic datasets. None of the subjects fulfilled criteria for alcohol dependence according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV-TextRevision (DSM-IV-TR). We measured how instrumental responding for rewards was influenced by background Pavlovian conditioned stimuli predicting action-independent rewards and losses. Behavioral PIT was enhanced in high-compared to low-risk drinkers (b = 0.09, SE = 0.03, z = 2.7, p < 0.009). Across all subjects, we observed PIT-related neural blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal in the right amygdala (t = 3.25, p_SVC = 0.04, x = 26, y = −6, z = −12), but not in NAcc. The strength of the behavioral PIT effect was positively correlated with polygenic risk for alcohol consumption (r_s = 0.17, p = 0.032). We conclude that behavioral PIT and polygenic risk for alcohol consumption might be a biomarker for a subclinical phenotype of risky alcohol consumption, even if no drug-related stimulus is present. The association between behavioral PIT effects and the amygdala might point to habitual processes related to out PIT task. In non-dependent young social drinkers, the amygdala rather than the NAcc is activated during PIT; possible different involvement in association with disease trajectory should be investigated in future studies.

【 授权许可】

Unknown