ArticleAlcohol, clinical & experimental research2023
Blunted neural reward response to alcohol and greater alcohol motivation in binge drinkers in a randomized clinical experiment.
Article in Alcohol, clinical & experimental research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reward Processing in Binge Eating and Harmful Drinking: A Systematic Review.The International journal of eating disorders · 2026Pooled it
- Sex-specific neural activation to stress and alcohol cues in high-risk drinkers: links between orbitofrontal circuits, alcohol craving, and future drinking.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Sex differences in nucleus accumbens circuitry engaged with binge-like ethanol drinking.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Network structure of non-suicidal self-injury, alcohol and food addiction, and motivation in bus drivers.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Diminished reward circuit response underlies pain avoidance learning deficits in problem drinkers.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2025Article
- Stress and substance use disorders: risk, relapse, and treatment outcomes.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2024Review
- Neural Correlates of Stress and Alcohol Cue-Induced Alcohol Craving and of Future Heavy Drinking: Evidence of Sex Differences.The American journal of psychiatry · 2024Article
- People who binge drink show neuroendocrine tolerance to alcohol cues that is associated with immediate and future drinking- results from a randomized clinical experiment.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlcohol stimulates cerebral blood flow (CBF) in brain reward regions. However, neural processes that support sustained alcohol motivation after the first drink are not well understood.
methodsUsing a novel placebo-controlled, randomized, crossover experiment, 27 individuals who binge drink (BD; 15 M, 12 F) and 25 social drinkers (SD; 15 M, 10 F) underwent a behavioral test of self-motivated alcohol consumption using an Alcohol Taste Test (ATT) involving alcoholic and nonalcoholic beer on separate days. The test was followed immediately by perfusion functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). On both days, participants then engaged in a post-scan ATT with placebo beer to assess sustained alcohol self-motivation without active alcohol effects. Linear mixed effects models were used to examine the effects of drinking group on the placebo-controlled effect of initial alcohol motivation on brain perfusion (whole brain corrected p < 0.001, cluster corrected p < 0.025) and on the relationship between placebo-controlled brain perfusion and sustained alcohol motivation.
resultsInitial alcohol self-motivation in the alcohol relative to placebo session led to markedly decreased activation in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the ventral striatum in BD relative to SD, indicative of neural reward tolerance. The BD group also showed an enhanced neural response in behavioral intention regions of the supplementary motor area (SMA) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) regions. Moreover, there was greater sustained alcohol motivation in BD than SD in the post-scan ATT in the alcohol relative to placebo session. Correspondingly, only in BD and only in the alcohol session, lower alcohol-induced OFC response correlated with concurrent sensitized SMA response, and each predicted the subsequent sustained higher alcohol motivation in the post-scan ATT.
conclusionsAlcohol-related OFC tolerance may play an important role in sustained alcohol motivation. Furthermore, both specific alcohol-related neural reward tolerance and premotor sensitization responses may contribute to escalating alcohol motivation to drive excessive alcohol intake, even in individuals without alcohol use disorder.
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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.