Lab for Clinical & Integrative Neuroscience, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at, Dallas, USA.
Department of Surgical Sciences, Section of Neurosurgery, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Sci Rep. 2018 Jan 17;8(1):923. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-18471-y.
Alcohol addiction is accompanied by aberrant neural activity. Previously, task-based fMRI and resting-state EEG studies have revealed that craving, a critical component of addiction, is linked to abnormal activity in cortical regions including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), nucleus accumbens (NAcc), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC), etc. In this study, we combine these two imaging techniques to investigate a group of alcohol-addicted patients and provide convergent evidence for the neural correlates of craving not only in alcohol but substance abuse in general. We observe abnormal BOLD signal levels in the dACC, NAcc, pgACC, PCC, amygdala, and parahippocampus (PHC) in a cue-reactivity fMRI experiment. These findings are consistent with increased beta-band activity in the dACC and pgACC in resting-state EEG. We further observe desynchronization characterized by decreased functional connectivity in cue-based fMRI and hypersynchronization characterized by increased functional connectivity between these regions in the theta frequency band. The results of our study show a consistent pattern of alcohol craving elicited by external cues and internal desires. Given the advantage of superior spatial and temporal resolution, we hypothesize a "central craving network" that integrates the different aspects of alcohol addiction into a unified percept.
酒精成瘾伴随着异常的神经活动。以前，基于任务的 fMRI 和静息态 EEG 研究表明，渴望是成瘾的一个关键组成部分，与包括背侧前扣带皮层（dACC）、伏隔核（NAcc）、后扣带皮层（PCC）和前扣带皮层的前下（pgACC）等皮质区域的异常活动有关。在这项研究中，我们将这两种成像技术结合起来，对一组酒精成瘾患者进行研究，为渴望的神经相关性提供了趋同证据，不仅在酒精方面，而且在一般物质滥用方面。我们在提示反应 fMRI 实验中观察到 dACC、NAcc、pgACC、PCC、杏仁核和海马旁回（PHC）中的 BOLD 信号水平异常。这些发现与静息态 EEG 中 dACC 和 pgACC 中β波段活动增加一致。我们进一步观察到基于提示的 fMRI 中功能连接减少的去同步特征，以及在θ频带中这些区域之间功能连接增加的超同步特征。我们的研究结果显示了由外部线索和内部欲望引起的一致的酒精渴望模式。鉴于优越的空间和时间分辨率的优势，我们假设一个“中心渴望网络”，将酒精成瘾的不同方面整合到一个统一的感知中。
