Dopamine-modulated aversive emotion processing fails in alcohol-dependent patients.

Negative mood states after alcohol detoxification may enhance the relapse risk. As recently shown in healthy volunteers, dopamine storage capacity (V d) in the left amygdala was positively correlated with functional activation in the left amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during an emotional task; high functional connectivity between the amygdala and the ACC, a region important for emotion regulation, was associated with low trait anxiety. Based on these findings, we now tested whether detoxified alcohol-dependent patients have a disrupted modulation of the anterior cingulate cortex activation in response to aversive stimuli by amygdala dopamine.

Effect of brain structure, brain function, and brain connectivity on relapse in alcohol-dependent patients.

Context: In alcohol-dependent patients, brain atrophy and functional brain activation elicited by alcohol-associated stimuli may predict relapse. However, to date, the interaction between both factors has not been studied.

Objective: To determine whether results from structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging are associated with relapse in detoxified alcohol-dependent patients.

Ventral striatal activation during reward processing in subjects with ultra-high risk for schizophrenia.

Background: Early dysfunction of the brain reward system in schizophrenia might be already recognized in the prodromal phase of this illness. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the blood oxygen level-dependent response in the ventral striatum (VS) of subjects with ultra-high risk for psychosis during the presentation of reward-indicating and loss-indicating stimuli.

Methods: Thirteen prodromal patients (mean age: 25.

Decreased Verbal Learning but not Recognition Performance in Alcohol-dependent Individuals During Early Abstinence.

Objective: Alcoholism ultimately leads to impairment of memory and other cognitive functions. This can interfere with treatment, if cognitively impaired alcohol-dependent individuals have difficulties recalling and implementing skills acquired during therapy. We investigate if alcohol-dependent individuals without clinically apparent withdrawal symptoms may still be impaired in higher-order cognitive functions.

Hyporeactivity of ventral striatum towards incentive stimuli in unmedicated depressed patients normalizes after treatment with escitalopram.

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) involves deficits in the reward system. While neuroimaging studies have focused on affective stimulus processing, few investigations have directly addressed deficits in the anticipation of incentives. We examined neural responses during gain and loss anticipation in patients with MDD before and after treatment with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI).