Publications by authors named "Evan Hahn"

Psychoactive drugs such as alcohol and stimulants are typically used in social settings such as bars, parties or small groups. Yet, relatively little is known about how social contexts affect responses to drugs, or how the drugs alter social interactions. It is possible that positive social contexts enhance the rewarding properties of drugs, perhaps increasing their potential for repeated use and abuse.

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Rationale: Alcohol is commonly used in social environments and is known to facilitate social behaviors. However, most controlled laboratory studies on alcohol have been conducted in isolated settings, limiting our understanding of its effects on social interactions.

Objectives: The current study was designed to examine the effects of alcohol on dyadic interactions in healthy volunteers (N = 37), with a focus on the influence of the conversation partner's drug state.

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Article Synopsis
  • Chronic low-grade inflammation is linked to motivational deficits in major depression, impacting patients' quality of life.
  • A study tested the anti-inflammatory drug infliximab on 42 unmedicated major depression patients, finding it improved their willingness to exert effort for rewards compared to a placebo.
  • Changes in effort-based decision-making were associated with reduced inflammatory markers and modulated brain activity related to reward processing, suggesting anti-inflammatory treatments could enhance motivation in depressed individuals with high inflammation.
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Pleasure is a fundamental driver of human behaviour, yet its neural basis remains largely unknown. Rodent studies highlight opioidergic neural circuits connecting the nucleus accumbens, ventral pallidum, insula and orbitofrontal cortex as critical for the initiation and regulation of pleasure, and human neuroimaging studies exhibit some translational parity. However, whether activation in these regions conveys a generalizable representation of pleasure regulated by opioidergic mechanisms remains unclear.

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Stress is a significant risk factor for the development of major depressive disorder (MDD), yet the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Preclinically, adaptive and maladaptive stress-induced changes in glutamatergic function have been observed in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Here, we examine stress-induced changes in human mPFC glutamate using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in two healthy control samples and a third sample of unmedicated participants with MDD who completed the Maastricht acute stress task, and one sample of healthy control participants who completed a no-stress control manipulation.

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