Abstract
Behavioral studies have shown an alcohol-approach bias in alcohol-dependent patients: the automatic tendency to faster approach than avoid alcohol compared with neutral cues, which has been associated with craving and relapse. Although this is a well-studied psychological phenomenon, little is known about the brain processes underlying automatic action tendencies in addiction. We examined 20 alcohol-dependent patients and 17 healthy controls with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), while performing an implicit approach-avoidance task. Participants pushed and pulled pictorial cues of alcohol and soft-drink beverages, according to a content-irrelevant feature of the cue (landscape/portrait). The critical fMRI contrast regarding the alcohol-approach bias was defined as (approach alcohol>avoid alcohol)>(approach soft drink>avoid soft drink). This was reversed for the avoid-alcohol contrast: (avoid alcohol>approach alcohol)>(avoid soft drink>approach soft drink). In comparison with healthy controls, alcohol-dependent patients had stronger behavioral approach tendencies for alcohol cues than for soft-drink cues. In the approach, alcohol fMRI contrast patients showed larger blood-oxygen-level-dependent responses in the nucleus accumbens and medial prefrontal cortex, regions involved in reward and motivational processing. In alcohol-dependent patients, alcohol-craving scores were positively correlated with activity in the amygdala for the approach-alcohol contrast. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was not activated in the avoid-alcohol contrast in patients vs controls. Our data suggest that brain regions that have a key role in reward and motivation are associated with the automatic alcohol-approach bias in alcohol-dependent patients.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Ulrike Malecki, Steffen Pawelczack, Silvia Hoffman, Natalie Becht, and Jana Paeplow for the recruitment of patients from the Salus Clinic Lindow; Heiner Stuke, Amir Javadi, Sven Hädel, Steffen Weissmann, and Scott Stensland for technical support; Nick White, Thomas Gladwin, and Georgina Torbet for proofreading; and Thomas Gladwin for final comments on the manuscript. We thank the Berlin School of Mind and Brain for reimbursement of the joystick.
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Wiers, C., Stelzel, C., Park, S. et al. Neural Correlates of Alcohol-Approach Bias in Alcohol Addiction: the Spirit is Willing but the Flesh is Weak for Spirits. Neuropsychopharmacol 39, 688–697 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2013.252
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2013.252
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