fMRI study of cognition, motivation, decision-making, reward, risk, aversion, negative emotion, arousal, craving, impulsivity, and stress in alcohol use disorder

National Institute On Alcohol Abuse And Alcoholism

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

a. Prediction Error Task. This task provides a wide variety of information regarding functions such as decision making, reward anticipation, learning and response to the failure of receiving an expected reward, all of which are implicated in AUD. In a collaboration with Dr. Lauren Atlas we are trying to model previously collected data on the Prediction Error Task to determine differences in reversal learning of patients with AUD in contrast to healthy controls. b. Negative Urgency Task. We have designed and developed a task in which we can study how stress and emotionally charged images can effect negative urgency utilizing a modified version of the delay discounting task. In this task the participants would be asked to select between an immediate reward (alcoholic beverages of choice and monetary equivalent cash) or double the amount in the future under negative conditions mentioned above. In this study we will also utilize functional near infrared spectroscopy to inspect the functional activities of the brain during this condition. Subject recruitment for this study is on the way.