Trial reportThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2014
Nipping cue reactivity in the bud: baclofen prevents limbic activation elicited by subliminal drug cues.
Trial report in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 122 citations in OpenAlex.
- Parameter Space and Potential for Biomarker Development in 25 Years of fMRI Drug Cue Reactivity: A Systematic Review.JAMA psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Baclofen for alcohol use disorder.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Baclofen for alcohol use disorder.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2018Pooled it
- Inhalation of Alcohol Vapor: Measurement and Implications.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2017Pooled it
- Targeting cortico-striatal-amygdalar networks via theta-band frontoparietal synchronization in opioid use disorder: a randomized tACS-fMRI Trial.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Trial
- Baclofen Modulates Neural Intrinsic Functional Connectivity in Treatment-Seeking Individuals With Alcohol Use Disorder.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2026Trial
- Effects of baclofen on insular gain anticipation in alcohol-dependent patients - a randomized, placebo-controlled, pharmaco-fMRI pilot trial.Psychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Baclofen attenuates fMRI alcohol cue reactivity in treatment-seeking alcohol dependent individuals.Psychopharmacology · 2021Trial
- Can baclofen change alcohol-related cognitive biases and what is the role of anxiety herein?Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2018Trial
- Baclofen for the Treatment of Alcohol Dependence and Possible Role of Comorbid Anxiety.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2014Trial
- The impact of anti-craving medication on cue reactivity and abstinence in patients undergoing alcohol detoxification: some preliminary evidence from a retrospective event-related potentials study.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Cocaine Cues Used in Experimental Research: A Systematic Review.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- GABAMedComm · 2025Review
- Neuroimaging Biomarkers in Addiction.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Neural mechanisms linked to treatment outcomes and recovery in substance-related and addictive disorders.Dialogues in clinical neuroscience · 2023Review
- Computationally Informed Interventions for Targeting Compulsive Behaviors.Biological psychiatry · 2023Review
- GABACurrent topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2022Article
- Helpful or Harmful? The Therapeutic Potential of Medications with Varying Degrees of Abuse Liability in the Treatment of Substance Use Disorders.Current addiction reports · 2022Review
- DNA Epigenetics in Addiction Susceptibility.Frontiers in genetics · 2022Review
- Sustained brain response to repeated drug cues is associated with poor drug-use outcomes.Addiction biology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Relapse is a widely recognized and difficult to treat feature of the addictions. Substantial evidence implicates cue-triggered activation of the mesolimbic dopamine system as an important contributing factor. Even drug cues presented outside of conscious awareness (i.e., subliminally) produce robust activation within this circuitry, indicating the sensitivity and vulnerability of the brain to potentially problematic reward signals. Because pharmacological agents that prevent these early cue-induced responses could play an important role in relapse prevention, we examined whether baclofen-a GABAB receptor agonist that reduces mesolimbic dopamine release and conditioned drug responses in laboratory animals-could inhibit mesolimbic activation elicited by subliminal cocaine cues in cocaine-dependent individuals. Twenty cocaine-dependent participants were randomized to receive baclofen (60 mg/d; 20 mg t.i.d.) or placebo. Event-related BOLD fMRI and a backward-masking paradigm were used to examine the effects of baclofen on subliminal cocaine (vs neutral) cues. Sexual and aversive cues were included to examine specificity. We observed that baclofen-treated participants displayed significantly less activation in response to subliminal cocaine (vs neutral) cues, but not sexual or aversive (vs neutral) cues, than placebo-treated participants in a large interconnected bilateral cluster spanning the ventral striatum, ventral pallidum, amygdala, midbrain, and orbitofrontal cortex (voxel threshold p < 0.005; cluster corrected at p < 0.05). These results suggest that baclofen may inhibit the earliest type of drug cue-induced motivational processing-that which occurs outside of awareness-before it evolves into a less manageable state.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.