Citation

Mackillop J, Amlung MT, Acker J, Gray JC, Brown CL, Murphy JG, Ray LA, Sweet LH. Neuropsychopharmacology 2014; 39(8): 1988-1995.

Affiliation

1] Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA [2] Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/npp.2014.47

PMID

24584331

Abstract

Neuroeconomics integrates concepts and methods from psychology, economics, and cognitive neuroscience to understand how the brain makes decisions. In economics, demandrefers to the relationship between a commodity's consumption and its cost, and, in behavioral studies, high alcohol demand has been consistently associated with greater alcohol misuse. Relatively little is known about how the brain processes demand decision making and the current study is an initial investigation of the neural correlates of alcohol demand among heavy drinkers.Using an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm, participants (N=24)selected how much they would drink under varying levels of price. These choices determined access to alcohol during a subsequent bar laboratory self-administration period. During decisions to drink in general, greater activity was present in multiple distinct subunits of the prefrontal and parietal cortices. In contrast, during decisions to drink that were demonstrably affected by the cost of alcohol, significantly greater activation was evident in frontostriatal regions, suggesting an active interplay between cognitive deliberation and subjective reward value. These choices were also characterized by significant deactivation in default mode network regions, suggesting suppression resulting fromgreater cognitive load. Across choice types, the anterior insula was notably recruited in diverse roles, further implicating the importance of interoceptive processing in decision making behavior.These findings reveal the neural signatures subserving alcoholcost-benefit decisionmaking, providing a foundation for future clinical applicationsof this paradigm and extending this approach to understanding the neural correlates of demand for other addictive commodities.Neuropsychopharmacology accepted article preview online, 3 March 2014; doi:10.1038/npp.2014.47.

Language: en