Neural Bases of Implicit Attention to Alcohol-Conditioned Stimuli

描述（由申请人提供）：通过与饮酒反复配对而与酒精相关的刺激被认为会诱发渴望，将内隐注意力转移到酒精上，并促进复发。然而，这种环境条件刺激的人类神经成像研究通常必须回归到实际刺激的代理（例如，啤酒瓶的图片），并且被迫回避条件作用历史和特定刺激的个体差异问题。例如，显示的视觉图像只能近似于自然环境中最初学习到的刺激，并且没有办法知道原始条件的精确药理条件和频率。这个应用程序使用R21机制来测试以下方法的可行性：1)对一种新的刺激进行经典条件反射，以精心控制的药物动力学模拟的静脉酒精输注为目标，以酒精消耗的最有益阶段（上升肢）为目标，然后2)研究对这些新线索做出反应的大脑系统。我们提出的范式将大大加强对刺激学习本身的确切性质的控制，从而允许对所涉及的神经通路以及这些通路中的活动如何与对酒精线索的内隐注意联系起来进行更精细的研究。这种方法在研究与饮酒行为和酒精中毒特定危险因素相关的神经机制方面非常有用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Stimuli that become associated with alcohol by repeated pairing with drinking are thought to induce craving, shift implicit attention toward alcohol, and promote relapse. However, human neuroimaging studies of such environmentally conditioned stimuli must usually revert to proxies for the actual stimuli (e.g., pictures of a beer bottle), and are forced to side-step the problem of individual differences in conditioning history and specific stimuli. For example, a displayed visual image can only approximate the originally learned stimulus in the natural environment, and there is no way to know the precise pharmacologic conditions and frequency of the original conditioning. This application uses the R21 mechanism to test the feasibility of: 1) Classically conditioning a novel stimulus to carefully controlled, pharmacokinetically modeled intravenous alcohol infusion that targets the most rewarding phase of alcohol consumption (the ascending limb), and then 2) studying the brain systems that respond to these novel cues. Our proposed paradigm would afford considerably greater control over the exact nature of stimulus learning itself, thus permitting a more refined study of the involved neural pathways and how activity in these pathways relates to implicit attention toward alcohol cues. Such an approach would be highly useful in the study of the neural mechanisms associated with drinking behaviors and particular risk factors for alcoholism. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This research will use a technology called functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the human brain's pathways related to learning how certain stimuli in the environment become associated with alcohol intoxication. The project will also study the manner in which people's attention are drawn to these alcohol associated stimuli after learning. Such factors are thought to be highly important to the development and maintenance of alcoholism and other addictions. Research such as this has the potential to improve our understanding of these brain systems, which may in turn lead to better treatments.