SynthesisDrug and alcohol dependence2014
Visual cortex activation to drug cues: a meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging papers in addiction and substance abuse literature.
Synthesis in Drug and alcohol dependence, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The Effects of Food Advertisements on Food Intake and Neural Activity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Recent Experimental Studies.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Pooled it
- A voxel-wise meta-analysis of task-based functional MRI studies on impaired gain and loss processing in adults with addiction.Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN · 2021Pooled it
- How the harm of drugs and their availability affect brain reactions to drug cues: a meta-analysis of 64 neuroimaging activation studies.Translational psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- A multi-scale, circuit-to-gene signature of approach-bias modification in internet gaming disorder.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2026Trial
- Neuroimaging findings from an experimental pharmacology trial of naltrexone in heavy drinkers of East Asian descent.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2019Trial
- Closed-loop transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) reduces cue reactivity and improves inhibitory control in methamphetamine use disorder with frequency and timing specificity.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Neurostructural Correlates and Impulsive Mechanisms of Exercise Dependence in Middle-Aged and Elderly Adults: Evidence from Gray Matter and Structural Covariance Networks.Brain topography · 2026Article
- Altered long-range visual hierarchical connectivity in internet gaming disorder: reduced V1-LOC connectivity and its association with addiction severity.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- The Neurocircuitry of Cannabis Cue Reactivity in Cannabis Use Disorder: A Functional Neuroimaging Study.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Elevated intron retention implicates neuroinflammation in brains of individuals with alcohol use disorder.Brain communications · 2026Article
- Internet addiction is associated with differences in static and dynamic hippocampal functional connectivity in young adults: the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Identification and External Validation of a Problem Cannabis Risk Network.Biological psychiatry · 2025Article
- Multimodal Investigations of Structural and Functional Brain Alterations in Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa and Their Relationships to Psychopathology.Biological psychiatry · 2025Article
- Context flexibly modulates cue representations in visual cortex.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Odor-enhanced Visual Processing in PTSD.NeuroImage · 2025Article
- Understanding Altered Dynamics in Cocaine Use Disorder Through State Transitions Mediated by Artificial Perturbations.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Hypnosis efficacy on nicotine addiction: An analysis of EEG microstates and brain oscillation entropy.AIMS neuroscience · 2025Article
- Neuroimaging Biomarkers in Addiction.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- The secondary visual cortex mediated the enhancement of associative learning on methamphetamine self-administration behaviors.Psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Mesocorticolimbic system reactivity to alcohol use-related visual cues as a function of alcohol sensitivity phenotype: A pilot fMRI study.Addiction neuroscience · 2024Article
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlthough the visual cortex does not typically receive much attention in addiction literature, neuroimaging studies often report significant activity in visual areas when drug users are exposed to drug cues. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to investigate the frequency with which occipital cortex activity is observed during drug cue exposure and to determine its spatial distribution.
methodsA comprehensive literature search was performed of human functional neuroimaging studies of drug cue-reactivity. Fifty-five studies were used to determine the frequency with which clusters of significant visual cortex activity during visual drug cues versus non-drug cues were reported. The spatial distribution of visual cortex activations was determined via activation likelihood estimation (ALE; FDR corrected, p<0.01) in a subset of these studies (n=24).
resultsEighty-six percent of studies that reported fMRI results for drug versus neutral visual cues within a substance-dependent group showed significant drug-elicited activity in the visual cortex. ALE revealed clusters in the left secondary visual cortex (BA 19) and clusters in the primary visual cortex (BA 17) that were consistently activated by drug cues.
conclusionsThese data demonstrate that the visual cortex, often overlooked in our discussions of the neural circuitry of addiction, consistently discriminates drug cues from neutral cues in substance dependent populations. While it remains unclear whether drug cue-elicited activation in occipital cortex is related to the rewarding properties of the drug and/or attentional mechanisms, these data support further exploration.
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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.