Article
Neurosciences
Marissa B. Borrego, Amy E. Chan, Angela R. Ozburn
Summary: Alcohol use disorder can be modeled in rodents using various drinking paradigms. This article discusses the role of the ventral striatum and extended amygdala in response to ethanol, as well as the importance of dynorphin/kappa-opioid receptor and corticotropin releasing factor/CRF receptor signaling in regulating drinking behaviors across brain regions and drinking paradigms. The article also highlights the need for further research using females and different rodent strains to improve the generalizability of findings and test potential therapeutics in human studies.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Cathy S. Chen, R. Becket Ebitz, Sylvia R. Bindas, A. David Redish, Benjamin Y. Hayden, Nicola M. Grissom
Summary: In value-based decision-making tasks, individuals may make decisions based on the feature dimension that reward probabilities vary on. However, in complex, multidimensional environments, stimuli can vary on multiple dimensions simultaneously, making it unclear which feature deserves the most credit for outcomes. This study found that sex was associated with divergent strategies for sampling and learning about the world in mice, with female mice acquiring correct image-value associations more quickly than males.
Article
Clinical Neurology
Thang M. Le, Wuyi Wang, Simon Zhornitsky, Isha Dhingra, Yu Chen, Sheng Zhang, Chiang-Shan R. Li
Summary: The study indicates that feelings of social isolation may contribute to alcohol misuse, while social support may act as a protective factor against excessive alcohol consumption. Changes in neural connectivity could be a key factor underlying problem drinking induced by social isolation.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Karen D. Rudolph, Megan M. Davis, Haley Skymba, Haina H. Modi, Eva H. Telzer
Summary: The study suggests that adolescent girls' social experiences can significantly influence neural sensitivity to social cues, especially during social reward and social threat processing. Stronger functional connectivity was found between certain brain regions at both very high and low levels of adversity, indicating a complex relationship between social experiences and brain function.
DEVELOPMENTAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Eva R. Pool, David Munoz Tord, Sylvain Delplanque, Yoann Stussi, Donato Cereghetti, Patrik Vuilleumier, David Sander
Summary: Different subregions of the ventral striatum play distinct roles in the motivational and hedonic components of reward processing. Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the interplay between pavlovian incentive and hedonic processes is crucial for comprehending compulsive reward-seeking behaviors such as addiction, binge eating, or gambling.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Psychiatry
Patrick Bach, Mathias Luderer, Ulf Joachim Mueller, Martin Jakobs, Juan Carlos Baldermann, Juergen Voges, Karl Kiening, Anke Lux, Veerle Visser-Vandewalle, Bernhard Bogerts, Jens Kuhn, Karl Mann
Summary: The use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a treatment option for alcohol use disorders (AUD) has shown positive effects in some case studies, and this double-blind randomized controlled trial provides evidence for its potential therapeutic effects.
TRANSLATIONAL PSYCHIATRY
(2023)
Article
Psychiatry
Gregory E. Miller, Stuart F. White, Edith Chen, Robin Nusslock
Summary: The study found that children living in poverty exhibit accentuated neural-immune signaling in response to stressors, supporting the neuroimmune network hypothesis. As socioeconomic conditions improve, these brain-immune associations become weaker.
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY
(2021)
Article
Psychiatry
Lauren Den Ouden, Chao Suo, Lucy Albertella, Lisa-Marie Greenwood, Rico S. C. Lee, Leonardo F. Fontenelle, Linden Parkes, Jeggan Tiego, Samuel R. Chamberlain, Karyn Richardson, Rebecca Segrave, Murat Yucel
Summary: Compulsivity, which underlies multiple disorders, is still poorly understood. This study identified three stable and distinct subtypes of compulsivity using a heterogeneous sample and data-driven statistical modeling. These subtypes showed meaningful differences in mood, intolerance of uncertainty, urgency, and neurobiological measures.
TRANSLATIONAL PSYCHIATRY
(2022)
Review
Nutrition & Dietetics
Gemma Mestre-Bach, Marc N. Potenza
Summary: This review article discusses the relevance of the reward system in behavioral addictions such as gambling disorder, internet gaming disorder, and food addiction/binge eating disorder. Specifically, it explores the role of the ventral striatum as a possible biomarker for these conditions and discusses studies analyzing brain changes following interventions for these disorders.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
M. L. Eckard, K. Welle, M. Sobolewski, D. A. Cory-Slechta
Summary: Many studies have shown that time-based interventions can reduce impulsive behavior in rodents, but few studies have directly examined how these interventions affect impulsive action, whether the effects of intervention differ by sex, and how these interventions affect neurochemistry in areas related to decision-making and reward. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a fixed-interval intervention on adult male and female mice, and found that the intervention increased striatal serotonergic analytes in both sexes, but had limited effects on the frontal cortex. In terms of impulsive action, the intervention reduced delay resets and no-wait resets in male mice, but not in female mice. Overall, these findings suggest that time-based interventions may effectively reduce impulsive action in rodents, particularly in males, and that these interventions operate through serotonergic augmentation in the striatum.
BEHAVIOURAL BRAIN RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Ramon Bartolo, Bruno Averbeck
Summary: Organisms have evolved to take advantage of environmental regularities, allowing them to acquire a model of the world and make decisions and adjust behavior efficiently under uncertainty. Recent research has focused on various aspects of model-based inference and its neural underpinnings.
CURRENT OPINION IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Review
Neurosciences
Magdalena Banwinkler, Hendrik Theis, Stephane Prange, Thilo van Eimeren
Summary: The limbic system plays a critical role in memory, learning, goal directed and emotional behavior. It is vulnerable to neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease, leading to a variety of symptoms. This systematic review focuses on neuroimaging of the limbic system in PD, providing insights into the affected structures, their function, disease related changes, and clinical manifestations.
Review
Neurosciences
Elena Ortiz-Teran, Ibai Diez, Joaquin Lopez-Pascual
Summary: Investment decisions are emotional choices that involve limbic-related structures responding to reward, risk, and emotional conflict. Investors rely on rational analyses based on facts, but making money from market forecasts can trigger emotional responses.
Article
Psychiatry
Lea Tochon, Rose-Marie Vouimba, Marc Corio, Nadia Henkous, Daniel Beracochea, Jean-Louis Guillou, Vincent David
Summary: This study found that chronic alcohol consumption and alcohol withdrawal modulate the use of spatial and single cue-based learning strategies, and enhance the association between addictive substances and the reward system through the activation of the amygdala. This cognitive imbalance could contribute to maintain addictive behaviors and increase the risk of relapse.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHIATRY
(2023)
Article
Substance Abuse
Angelica M. Morales, Nicole A. Stark, Bonnie J. Nagel
Summary: The study provides novel information about potential risk factors for early initiation of heavy alcohol use, showing that the connectivity of the ventral striatum with other brain regions is related to the timing of binge drinking initiation, independent of baseline measures of risky decision making or sensation seeking.
DRUG AND ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE
(2021)