PET-derived 'Dopamine Movies' of Early-Stage Addiction to Cigarette Smoking: A Pilot Study



 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cigarette smoking is a serious global public health issue. Scientists need to better understand the neural substrates of smoking and nicotine dependence in order to guide the development of more effective medications for smoking cessation. The PI and team at Yale have recently developed and deployed a new image analysis technique for producing "dopamine movies" of the brain's response to cigarette smoking. This technique has already yielded exciting findings: we have identified sex differences in the location and speed of the dopamine response to cigarette smoking (Cosgrove, J Neurosci. 2014 Dec 10;34(50):16851-5.). Knowledge Gap: If we could image responses of new smokers to smoking cigarettes during acquisition of addiction we could better understand the relative importance of cues and drug effects in the development of dependence. Unfortunately, the target population for studying developing addiction in most countries would be adolescents, but they are generally not permitted to undergo PET as research subjects Unique study population: Universal military service for men and women in Israel, along with cigarette access in the Israeli army, provides a unique opportunity to researchers to study the onset of smoking addiction. Our long term goal is to study this unique cohort with PET and dopamine movies to better understand the acquisition of smoking addiction. First, we must accomplish our short term goal: to validate the use of our technology at a PET site in Israel with access to the study population. International Collaboration: This project would be a collaboration between Yale imaging innovators and and PET scientists and other researchers at Hadassah /Hebrew University to take advantage of the unique study population in Israel. The collaboration's immediate goal would be to establish the (NIDA-supported) imaging technology necessary to execute a large study of early-stage smokers at the research site in Israel. Re-analyses in various modes of the recently-published Yale data will help to validate and explain the results of the pilot study to be obtained in Israel. The project is intended to disseminate NIDA-funded technology through partnership with a highly regarded foreign collaborator in order to seize the opportunity to study smoking addiction in early-smokers thanks to unique circumstances in Israel.