overview: Researchers have identified neural biomarkers associated with food and drug cravings. The findings may help pave the way for new treatments for addiction.
sauce: Yell
Craving is known to be an important factor in substance use disorders and may increase the likelihood of future drug use or relapse. However, how its neural substrate, the brain, triggers cravings is poorly understood.
In a new study, researchers from Yale University, Dartmouth University, and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) identified stable brain patterns, or neural markers, of drug and food cravings. Their findings were Nature Neuroscience.
The findings could be an important step in understanding the brain underpinnings of craving, addiction as a brain disorder, and how to better treat addiction in the future, the researchers said. I’m here. Importantly, this neural marker could also be used to distinguish drug users from non-users, making it a neural marker of craving as well as one day being used to diagnose substance use disorders. It is also a neural marker that may
Many diseases have biological markers that doctors can use to diagnose and treat patients. For example, to diagnose diabetes, doctors test her for a blood marker called A1C.
“One of the benefits of having a stable biomarker of a disease is that you can test anyone to see if they have the disease,” says Hedy, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School. Korver said. and author of the study. “And psychopathology doesn’t have it, and addiction doesn’t.”
To determine whether such markers could be established for desire, Korver and her colleagues Leonie Korban of CRNS and Toe Wager of Dartmouth College used machine learning algorithms. Their idea is that if many people who experience similar levels of craving share a pattern of brain activity, a machine learning algorithm can detect that pattern and use it to create new models based on brain images. It was suggested that it might be possible to predict craving levels by
This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, which provide insight into brain activity, and self-reported ratings of craving from 99 individuals to train and test machine learning algorithms. did.
fMRI data were collected by individuals who identified themselves as either drug users or nonusers while viewing images of drugs and highly palatable foods. Participants then rated how much they crave the items they saw.
The algorithm identified patterns of brain activity that could be used to predict the intensity of drug and food cravings from fMRI images alone, researchers said.
The pattern they observed, named the Neurobiological Craving Signature (NCS), includes activity in several brain regions, some of which have been linked to substance use and craving in previous studies. was doing.
However, the NCS also provided a new level of detail, showing how neural activity within subregions of these brain regions can predict craving.
“This gives us a very detailed understanding of how these regions interact and predict our subjective experience of craving,” says Korver.
The NCS also revealed similar brain responses to both drug and food cravings. Importantly, this marker was able to distinguish between drug users and non-users based on their brain responses to drug cues, but not to food cues.
“And because participants who used cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco were included, these findings are not specific to one substance, and the NCS predicts cravings for all of them,” Korver said. “So it’s really a craving and addiction biomarker. There’s something that all these substance use disorders have in common, they’re caught in the moment of craving.”
Wager also points out that seemingly similar emotional and motivational processes actually involve different brain pathways and can be measured in different ways.
“What we see here is probably less of a general feature of ‘rewards’ and more selective towards food and drug cravings,” he said.
In addition, the NCS also provides new brain targets to better understand how food and drug cravings are influenced by context and emotional state. “For example, future studies could use the NCS to measure how stress and negative emotions increase the urge to use drugs or indulge in your favorite chocolate.”
Koher notes that while NCS is promising, it needs further validation and is not yet ready for clinical use. That’s probably a few years away. She is now working with her team and collaborators to better understand the network of this brain region and see if her NCS can predict how people with substance use disorders will respond to treatment. is working on
That would make this neural marker a powerful tool for informing treatment strategies, she said.
“Our hope is that the brain, especially the NCS as a stable biological marker, will help us identify who has a substance use disorder, and not only understand the differences in outcomes for people, but also who can benefit from specific treatments.” react to.”
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About this Addiction Research News
author: press office
sauce: Yell
contact: Press Office – Yale University
image: image is public domain
Original research: closed access.
“Neuromarkers of drug and food craving distinguish drug users from non-users” by Hedy Korver et al. Nature Neuroscience
overview
Neuromarkers of drug and food craving distinguish drug users from non-users
Craving is a central feature of substance use disorders. It is a strong predictor of substance use and relapse, and is associated with overeating, gambling, and other maladaptive behaviors.
Craving is measured by self-reports limited by reflective access and sociocultural context. Neurobiological markers of craving are both needed and scarce, and it remains unclear whether drug and food craving involve similar mechanisms.
Three functional magnetic resonance imaging studies (n= 99), we used machine learning to identify cross-validated neuromarkers that predict self-reported intensity of cue-induced drug and food cravings (P.< 0.0002).
This pattern, termed the Neurobiological Craving Signature (NCS), involves the ventromedial prefrontal and cingulate cortex, ventral striatum, temporal/parietal cortex, dorsomedial thalamus and cerebellum.
Importantly, NCS responses to drug and food cues discriminate between drug users and non-users with 82% accuracy. NCS is also modulated by self-regulatory strategies. The transfer between separate neural markers of drug and food craving suggests a shared neurobiological mechanism.
Future studies can assess the discriminant and convergent validity of NCS and test whether NCS predicts long-term clinical outcome in response to clinical intervention.
