Network Analysis and Computational Modeling Core

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Project Summary This renewal of the P60 Indiana Alcohol Research Center (IARC) will identify the changes in brain activity that predispose one to Binge and High Intensity Drinking (BHID). Towards this goal, the IARC will be collecting large, dense data sets from humans and rodents with a range of techniques that acquire multiple, simultaneous measures of neural function. This creates a critical need for an IARC service core that provide expertise in network analysis and computational modeling to the center’s research components. The goal of the NACM is to interrogate the brain networks and neural circuits that underlie BHID in a translational manner. The objective of the NCAM is to therefore increase synergy and translation across species and components, and to integrate the center’s data into computational models capable of articulating the pathology in neural circuits that underlie BHID. The NACM will work closely with the research components to implement and develop analyses and computational modeling techniques that capture network and systems-level interactions. Accomplishing this will provide added rigor and more integrated, synergistic conclusions generated by IARC components. Thus, the NCAM will provide advanced, targeted analyses and computational models that increase synergy among the components. This will disseminate current IARC expertise in statistical analyses and computational modeling to the center more broadly. As a core, the NACM does not set out to test specific hypotheses, but rather, to work closely with the research components to add rigor and synergy. This allows each component to assess their hypotheses more effectively, with the long-term goal of providing more integrated model of the mechanisms of BHID. This will be accomplished in three Specific Aims: Specific Aim 1: Identify altered, potentially translational, network functions in BHID in humans and rodents. Specific Aim 2: Apply population analysis and artificial intelligence-based approaches to identify altered computations in BHID to human and rodent data. Specific Aim 3: Build computational models of corticolimbic systems altered in BHID. The positive impact of the NACM will be to provide insight into how computations performed by brain networks are altered in those at risk for BHID and AUD. Understanding this will inspire novel approaches to treatment that more tightly link heritable changes in neural circuit function to BHID.