Vulnerability to substance abuse: The striatal dopamine response to drug challenge
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Drug addiction is a worldwide problem that imposes significant costs on society. Aggravating the problem is that we continue to have a poor understanding of vulnerability factors and treatment targets. To date the best implicated brain system is the ascending mesolimbic dopamine cell pathway and its regulation by descending cortical input. The present thesis first reviews the literature describing possible roles of dopamine in addiction, and the relationship between pre-frontal cortical function and striatal dopamine. The body of the thesis consists of three data chapters.In the first study we examined the possibility that young people at elevated risk for addiction based on a multi-generational family history (FH) of substance use problems might have perturbed mesolimbic dopamine responses. As a test, we used positron emission tomography (PET) with [11C]raclopride to measure d-amphetamine (0.3 mg/kg, p.o.) induced striatal dopamine responses in: (1) high-risk young adults with a multigenerational FH of substance use disorders (FH+exposed), (2) stimulant drug-naïve healthy controls with no known risk factors for addiction (Ctls_naive), and (3) subjects matched to the high-risk group on personal drug use but without a FH of substance use problems (Ctls_exposed). We found that compared to either control group, the FH+exposed subjects exhibited smaller [11C]raclopride responses, with the largest effect in the right ventral striatum. Together, the results suggest that young people at familial high-risk for substance use disorders have decreased dopamine responses to an amphetamine challenge, an effect that predates the onset of addiction. In the second study we examined the variability in the striatal dopamine response to d-amphetamine as a function of cortical thickness. Marked individual differences in these responses are seen in laboratory animals, related in part to input from the prefrontal cortex, and substance dependent individuals are reported to have significant cortical thinning. Based on these observations, we measured the relation between cortical morphology and drug-induced striatal dopamine release in healthy adults. As expected, d-amphetamine produced significant reductions in [11C]raclopride binding potential in the striatum. There was substantial individual variability in this response, which was correlated with cortical thickness in the frontal lobe as a whole. A thicker cortex correlated with a smaller dopamine response. While prefrontal regulation of striatal function has been well studied, it was unclear if the thickness of the prefrontal cortex was an acceptable proxy to the function of that region. These results suggest it is. In the third study we applied the analysis of cortical thickness to all three groups described in the first study. Of particular interest was whether the blunted amphetamine-induced dopamine response seen in the family history positive group was related to alterations in cortical thickness. The same methods described in the second study were applied to the data from the first. We found that 1) FH+exposed subjects had thicker cortex, 2) as in the Ctls_naive, cortical thickness correlated with the dopamine response in FH+exposed subjects.Together, the studies provide evidence of a pre-existing or rapidly developing neurobiological difference in individuals at high risk for addictions. If vulnerable individuals can be identified reliably, it might be possible to provide early preventative interventions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".