Smoking experience modulates the cortical integration of vision and haptics

Electrophysiological signature of the interplay between habits and inhibition in response to smoking-related cues in individuals with a smoking habit: An event-related potential study

The rigid, stimulus-bound nature of drug seeking that characterizes substance use disorder (SUD) has been related to a dysregulation of motivational and early attentional reflexive and inhibitory reflective systems. However, the mechanisms by which these systems are engaged by drug-paired conditioned stimuli (CSs) when they promote the enactment of seeking habits in individuals with a SUD have not been elucidated. The present study aimed behaviourally and electrophysiologically to characterize the nature of the interaction between the reflexive and reflective systems recruited by CSs in individuals with a smoking habit. We measured the behavioural performance and associated event-related potentials (ERPs) of 20 individuals with a smoking habit and 20 controls, who never smoked regularly, in a modified Go/NoGo task during which smoking-related CSs, appetitive and neutral pictures, presented either in first or third-person visual perspective were displayed 250 ms before the Go/NoGo cue. We show that smoking-related cues selectively influence early incentive motivation-related attention bias (N2 after picture onset), motor readiness and behavioural inhibition (Go-P3, NoGo-P3 and Pc) of individuals with a smoking habit only when presented from a first-person visual perspective. These data together identify the neural signature of the aberrant engagement of the reflexive and reflective systems during the recruitment of an incentive habit by CSs presented as if they had been response-produced, that is, as conditioned reinforcers.

Common and separable neural alterations in substance use disorders: A coordinate-based meta-analyses of functional neuroimaging studies in humans

Delineating common and separable neural alterations in substance use disorders (SUD) is imperative to understand the neurobiological basis of the addictive process and to inform substance‐specific treatment strategies. Given numerous functional MRI (fMRI) studies in different SUDs, a meta‐analysis could provide an opportunity to determine robust shared and substance‐specific alterations. The present study employed a coordinate‐based meta‐analysis covering fMRI studies in individuals with addictive cocaine, cannabis, alcohol, and nicotine use. The primary meta‐analysis demonstrated common alterations in primary dorsal striatal, and frontal circuits engaged in reward/salience processing, habit formation, and executive control across different substances and task‐paradigms. Subsequent sub‐analyses revealed substance‐specific alterations in frontal and limbic regions, with marked frontal and insula‐thalamic alterations in alcohol and nicotine use disorders respectively. Examining task‐specific alterations across substances revealed pronounced frontal alterations during cognitive processes yet stronger striatal alterations during reward‐related processes. Finally, an exploratory meta‐analysis revealed that neurofunctional alterations in striatal and frontal reward processing regions can already be determined with a high probability in studies with subjects with comparably short durations of use. Together the findings emphasize the role of dysregulations in frontostriatal circuits and dissociable contributions of these systems in the domains of reward‐related and cognitive processes which may contribute to substance‐specific behavioral alterations.

Classifying and characterizing nicotine use disorder with high accuracy using machine learning and resting-state fMRI

Cigarette smoking continues to be a leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality. Although the majority of smokers report making a quit attempt in the past year, smoking cessation rates remain modest. Thus, developing accurate, data-driven methods that can classify and characterize the neural features of nicotine use disorder (NUD) would be a powerful clinical tool that could aid in optimizing treatment development and guide treatment modifications. This investigation applied support vector machine-based classification to resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) data from individuals diagnosed with NUD (n = 108; 63 male) and matched nonsmoking controls (n = 108; 63 male) and multi-dimensional scaling to visualize the heterogeneity of NUD in individual smokers based on rsFC measures. Machine-based learning models identified five resting-state networks that played a role in distinguishing smokers from controls: the posterior and anterior default mode networks, the sensorimotor network, the salience network and the right executive control network. The classification method constructed classifiers with an average correct classification rate of 88.1 percent and an average area under the curve of 0.93. Compared with controls, individuals with NUD had weaker functional connectivity measures within these networks (P < 0.05, false discovery rate corrected). Further, multi-dimensional scaling visualization demonstrated that controls were similar to each other whereas individuals with NUD had less similarity to controls and to other individuals with NUD. Our findings build upon previous literature demonstrating that machine learning-based approaches to classifying rsFC data offer a valuable technique to understanding network-level differences in nicotine-related neurobiology and extend previous findings by improving classification accuracy and demonstrating the heterogeneity in resting-state networks of individuals with NUD.

Enhanced visuo-haptic integration for the non-dominant hand

Visuo-haptic integration contributes essentially to object shape recognition. Although there has been a considerable advance in elucidating the neural underpinnings of multisensory perception, it is still unclear whether seeing an object and exploring it with the dominant hand elicits the same brain response as compared to the non-dominant hand. Using fMRI to measure brain activation in right-handed participants, we found that for both left- and right-hand stimulation the left lateral occipital complex (LOC) and anterior cerebellum (aCER) were involved in visuo-haptic integration of familiar objects. These two brain regions were then further investigated in another study, where unfamiliar, novel objects were presented to a different group of right-handers. Here the left LOC and aCER were more strongly activated by bimodal than unimodal stimuli only when the left but not the right hand was used. A direct comparison indicated that the multisensory gain of the fMRI activation was significantly higher for the left than the right hand. These findings are in line with the principle of "inverse effectiveness", implying that processing of bimodally presented stimuli is particularly enhanced when the unimodal stimuli are weak. This applies also when right-handed subjects see and simultaneously touch unfamiliar objects with their non-dominant left hand. Thus, the fMRI signal in the left LOC and aCER induced by visuo-haptic stimulation is dependent on which hand was employed for haptic exploration.

The ventral-hypothalamic input route: a common neural network for abstract cognition and sexuality

Classically, external receptors of the body transmit information from the environment to the cerebral cortex via the thalamus. This review explains and argues that only concrete external information is transmitted from peripheral receptors to the cortex via a thalamic route, while abstract and sexual external information are actually transmitted from peripheral receptors to the cortex through a cognitive hypothalamic route. Sexual function typically implies participation of two distinct partners, ensuring reproduction in many species including humans. Human sexual response involves participation of multiple (environmental, biological, psychological) kinds of stimuli and processing, so the understanding of sexual control and response supposes integration between the classical physiological mechanisms with the more complex processes of our 'mind'. Cognition and sexuality are two relational functions, which are dependent on concrete (colours, sounds, etc.) and/or abstract (gestures, facial expression, how you move, the way you say something seemingly trivial, etc.) environmental cues. Abstract cues are encoded independent of the specific object features of the stimuli, suggesting that such cues should be transmitted and interpreted within the brain through a system different than the classical thalamo-cortical network that operates on concrete (material) information. Indeed, data show that the cerebral cortex is capable of interpreting two distinct (concrete and abstract) formats of information via distinct and non-compatible brain areas. We expand upon this abstract-concrete dichotomy of the brain, positing that the two distinct cortical networks should be uploaded with distinct information from the environment via two distinct informational input routes. These two routes would be represented by the two distinct routes of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), namely the classical/dorsal thalamic input route for concrete information and the ventral hypothalamic input route for abstract cognition and sexuality. Physiologically, the hypothalamic (dual-autonomic) route of the ARAS that processes abstract and sexual information is incompatible with the thalamic (somatic) route of the ARAS that processes concrete information, such that the two distinct routes would be needed to support the mind processes (awareness, consciousness, sexuality) through their own informational inputs from the environment. Informationally, the concrete external data are differentiated from abstract and sexual external data, so that they should be transmitted to cortex through distinct input routes. Pathologically, the hardware and/or software impairments of the hypothalamic default-mode network generate disturbed messages within the brain (related to information transmitted on this route), laying at the basis of mental and sexual disorders. The novel conceptualisations presented in the present paper help address issues surrounding the mind-brain dichotomy and, in doing so, suggest new possible avenues for exploration in the treatment and interventions for cognitive and sexual problems.

Sensory modality of smoking cues modulates neural cue reactivity

RATIONALE

Behavioral experiments have demonstrated that the sensory modality of presentation modulates drug cue reactivity.

OBJECTIVES

The present study on nicotine addiction tested whether neural responses to smoking cues are modulated by the sensory modality of stimulus presentation.

METHODS

We measured brain activation using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 15 smokers and 15 nonsmokers while they viewed images of smoking paraphernalia and control objects and while they touched the same objects without seeing them.

RESULTS

Haptically presented, smoking-related stimuli induced more pronounced neural cue reactivity than visual cues in the left dorsal striatum in smokers compared to nonsmokers. The severity of nicotine dependence correlated positively with the preference for haptically explored smoking cues in the left inferior parietal lobule/somatosensory cortex, right fusiform gyrus/inferior temporal cortex/cerebellum, hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex, and supplementary motor area.

CONCLUSIONS

These observations are in line with the hypothesized role of the dorsal striatum for the expression of drug habits and the well-established concept of drug-related automatized schemata, since haptic perception is more closely linked to the corresponding object-specific action pattern than visual perception. Moreover, our findings demonstrate that with the growing severity of nicotine dependence, brain regions involved in object perception, memory, self-processing, and motor control exhibit an increasing preference for haptic over visual smoking cues. This difference was not found for control stimuli. Considering the sensory modality of the presented cues could serve to develop more reliable fMRI-specific biomarkers, more ecologically valid experimental designs, and more effective cue-exposure therapies of addiction.

The neural network sustaining crossmodal integration is impaired in alcohol-dependence: an fMRI study

INTRODUCTION

Crossmodality (i.e., the integration of stimulations coming from different sensory modalities) is a crucial ability in everyday life and has been extensively explored in healthy adults. Still, it has not yet received much attention in psychiatry, and particularly in alcohol-dependence. The present study investigates the cerebral correlates of crossmodal integration deficits in alcohol-dependence to assess whether these deficits are due to the mere accumulation of unimodal impairments or rather to specific alterations in crossmodal areas.

METHODS

Twenty-eight subjects [14 alcohol-dependent subjects (ADS), 14 paired controls] were scanned using fMRI while performing a categorization task on faces (F), voices (V) and face-voice pairs (FV). A subtraction contrast [FV-(F+V)] and a conjunction analysis [(FV-F) ∩ (FV-V)] isolated the brain areas specifically involved in crossmodal face-voice integration. The functional connectivity between unimodal and crossmodal areas was explored using psycho-physiological interactions (PPI).

RESULTS

ADS presented only moderate alterations during unimodal processing. More centrally, in the subtraction contrast and conjunction analysis, they did not show any specific crossmodal brain activation while controls presented activations in specific crossmodal areas (inferior occipital gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, superior parietal lobule). Moreover, PPI analyses showed reduced connectivity between unimodal and crossmodal areas in alcohol-dependence.

CONCLUSIONS

This first fMRI exploration of crossmodal processing in alcohol-dependence showed a specific face-voice integration deficit indexed by reduced activation of crossmodal areas and reduced connectivity in the crossmodal integration network. Using crossmodal paradigms is thus crucial to correctly evaluate the deficits presented by ADS in real-life situations.