Publications by authors named "Noel X"

Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates how individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) process decisions under stress, focusing on differences between Model-Free (MF) and Model-Based (MB) learning.
  • It involved 117 participants (55 with AUD, 62 controls) who underwent a stress-inducing task and a decision-making task to assess their learning tendencies.
  • Results indicate that those with AUD rely more on retrospective (MF) decision-making and less on prospective (MB) strategies, particularly under stress, suggesting unique stress responses in AUD individuals that have clinical implications.
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Background/objective: Inhibition is crucial for controlling behavior and is impaired in various psychopathologies. Neurofeedback holds promise in addressing cognitive deficits, and experimental research is essential for identifying its functional benefits. This study aimed to investigate whether boosting sensorimotor activity (SMR) improves inhibitory control in a final sample of healthy individuals ( = 53), while exploring the underlying neurophysiological mechanism.

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Introduction: Increased salience of drug-related cues over nondrug reinforcers can drive drug use and contribute to tobacco use disorder (TUD). An important scientific and clinical goal is to effectively measure this elevated drug-seeking behavior in TUD. However, most TUD assessments rely on self-reported cravings and cigarette consumption, not providing an objective measure of the impact of drug cues on biasing behavior toward drugs.

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Background: A significant number of individuals with alcohol use disorder remain unresponsive to currently available treatments, which calls for the development of new alternatives. In parallel, psilocybin-assisted therapy for alcohol use disorder has recently yielded promising preliminary results. Building on extant findings, the proposed study is set to evaluate the feasibility and preliminary clinical efficacy of psilocybin-assisted therapy when incorporated as an auxiliary intervention during inpatient rehabilitation for severe alcohol use disorder.

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Introduction: Increased salience of drug-related cues over non-drug reinforcers can drive drug use and contribute to tobacco use disorder (TUD). An important scientific and clinical goal is to effectively measure this elevated drug-seeking behavior in TUD. However, most TUD assessments rely on self-reported cravings and cigarette consumption, not providing an objective measure of the impact of drug-cues on biasing behavior towards drugs.

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(1) Background: Inhibitory and rewarding processes that mediate attentional biases to addiction-related cues may slightly differ between patients suffering from alcohol use (AUD) or gambling (GD) disorder. (2) Methods: 23 AUD inpatients, 19 GD patients, and 22 healthy controls performed four separate Go/NoGo tasks, in, respectively, an alcohol, gambling, food, and neutral long-lasting cueing context during the recording of event-related potentials (ERPs). (3) Results: AUD patients showed a poorer inhibitory performance than controls (slower response latencies, lower N2d, and delayed P3d components).

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Addiction is a persistent, recurring condition characterized by repeated relapses despite the desire to control drug use or maintain sobriety. The attainment of abstinence is hindered by persistent maladaptive drug-associated memories, which drive drug-seeking and use behavior. This article examines the preliminary evidence supporting the combination of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques and memory editing (or reconsolidation) interventions as add-on forms of treatment for individuals with substance-related disorders (SUD).

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Background And Aims: Experiencing acute stress is common in behavioral addictions such as gambling disorder. Additionally, like most substance-induced addictions, aberrant decision-making wherein a reactive habit-induced response (conceptualized as a Model-free [MF] in reinforcement learning) suppresses a flexible goal-directed response (conceptualized as a Model-based [MB]) is also common in gambling disorder. In the current study we investigated the influence of acute stress on the balance between habitual response and the goal-directed system.

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The tendency to continue or intensify gambling after losing (loss-chasing) is widely regarded as a defining feature of gambling disorder. However, loss-chasing in real gambling contexts is multifaceted, and some aspects are better understood than others. Gamblers may chase losses between multiple sessions or within a single session.

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Background: A reduced capacity to mentally simulate future scenarios could be of clinical importance in alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying episodic future thinking (EFT) impairment in AUD.

Methods: We tested patients with severe AUD using two measures of EFT: the individual's own subjective experience of their imaginings (phenomenology) and the objective number of details included in imagined events, as assessed by an independent observer (examination).

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Background: Approximately half of all people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) relapse into alcohol reuse in the next few weeks after a withdrawal treatment. Brain stimulation and cognitive training represent recent forms of complementary interventions in the context of AUD.

Objective: To evaluate the clinical efficacy of five sessions of 2 mA bilateral transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for 20 min over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) (left cathodal/right anodal) combined with alcohol cue inhibitory control training (ICT) as part of rehabilitation.

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Recent advances in social neuroscience have highlighted the critical role of the cerebellum in social cognition, and especially the posterior cerebellum. Studies have supported the view that the posterior cerebellum builds internal action models of our social interactions to predict how other people's actions will be executed and what our most likely responses are to these actions. This mechanism allows to better anticipate action sequences during social interactions in an automatic and intuitive way and to fine-tune these anticipations, making it easier to understand other's social behaviors and mental states (e.

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As massive amounts of information are becoming available to people, understanding the mechanisms underlying information-seeking is more pertinent today than ever. In this study, we investigate the underlying motivations to seek out information in healthy and addicted individuals. We developed a novel decision-making task and a novel computational model which allows dissociating the relative contribution of two motivating factors to seek out information: a desire for novelty and a general desire for knowledge.

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Background: Spontaneous motor responses of approach and avoidance toward stimuli are important in characterizing psychopathological conditions, including alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, divergent results have been reported, possibly due to confounded parameters (e.g.

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There is a debate over whether actions that resist devaluation (i.e., compulsive alcohol consumption) are primarily habit- or goal-directed.

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The Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is regularly associated with depression and trait emotion regulation. However, the interaction between HRV and emotional disturbances is still debated. Only a few studies indicate that HRV moderates the effect of personality traits involved in psychopathological disorders.

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Low insight is reported as a risk factor for relapse among patients treated for alcohol use disorders. However, to date, little is known on why patients with low insight are at higher risk for relapse. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that an implicit preference for alcohol over abstinence predicts relapse in patients with low, but not high, alcohol insight.

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Compulsive behaviors (e.g., addiction) can be viewed as an aberrant decision process where inflexible reactions automatically evoked by stimuli (habit) take control over decision making to the detriment of a more flexible (goal-oriented) behavioral learning system.

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There is growing interest in non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) as a novel treatment option for substance-use disorders (SUDs). Recent momentum stems from a foundation of preclinical neuroscience demonstrating links between neural circuits and drug consuming behavior, as well as recent FDA-approval of NIBS treatments for mental health disorders that share overlapping pathology with SUDs. As with any emerging field, enthusiasm must be tempered by reason; lessons learned from the past should be prudently applied to future therapies.

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Despite equated behavioral performance levels, hazardous drinkers generally exhibited increased neural activity while performing simple cognitive tasks compared to light drinkers. Here, 49 participants (25 hazardous and 24 light drinkers) participated in an event-related potentials (ERPs) study while performing an -back working memory task. In the control zero-back (N0) condition, the subjects were required to press a button when the number "2" or "6" was displayed.

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