Neurobiological basis of addictive disorders: A meta-analysis of task-related neuroimaging studies

• Main Authors: Chuang, Chia-Chen, 莊家臻
• Other Authors: Huang, Chih-Mao
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/r2624h

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 生物科技學系 === 105 === Addiction is a neurobiological disease characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite negative bio-psychosocial consequences, and can be classified as the loss of voluntary control over mood-alerting addicting substances (e.g., alcohol) or behaviors (e.g., gambling). However, with the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorder (DSM-5), both Substance-Related Disorder and Gambling Disorder are re-conceptualized into the revised category of “Addiction and Related Disorder” which suggests a variety of commonalities in clinical expression and treatment between two types of addictions. Here, we investigate whether brain activities are affected the same way in behavioral addictions as they are by substance addiction which has been identified by chronic exposure to drugs that causes significant biochemistry changes in brain circuits. A meta-analysis approach using Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) was conducted to compute statistically significant concordance with published coordinates across independent task-related functional neuroimaging studies. One hundred and fifty studies were categorized into three visual stimuli that induce specific nature of addictive behaviors: substance cue, gambling cue, and Internet & sex cues. Meta-analytic neuroimaging results demonstrated that participants showed greater brain activation in caudate, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and insula when viewing substance cues. Caudate has been identified to be responsible for estimating values and commanding action, and ACC has been suggested to error monitoring and conflict resolution. Similarly, the patterns of brain activation were also observed when viewing gambling cues, suggesting a common reward system regardless of different types of stimulants. Moreover, participants with substance-related disorder showed greater activation in right amygdala compared to healthy controls, indicating a dysfunction of neural circuitry to regulate the affective responses. Finally, the common brain regions in subthalamic nucleus (STN) and substania nigra (SN) were found across a variety of visual stimulus presented, including substance-related cue and CNS stimulant cue. These results provide a quantitative meta-analytic evidence of neurobiological basis of addictive disorder, and provide empirical evidence of similarities in reward neural pathways of the addictive human brain between substance addictions and behavioral addictions. Finally, our results support the classification of DSM-5 that neural network of gambling disorder could be resemble to other substance-related and addictive disorders.