Elsevier

Clinical Imaging

Volume 36, Issue 6, November–December 2012, Pages 695-701
Clinical Imaging

Original Article
Functional magnetic resonance imaging of methamphetamine craving

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinimag.2012.02.006Get rights and content

Abstract

The study aimed to explore the abnormal activation of special brain areas associated with methamphetamine craving using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and to reveal the neurobiological basis of addiction. Twenty-six methamphetamine addicts and 26 healthy subjects were scanned by brain fMRI while watching pictures of happy, sad, or methamphetamine to acquire resource data. SPM5 was used to analyze fMRI data to get related brain activation map, and it was found that methamphetamine addicts had high brain activation in cingulate and low activation in frontal lobe when watching methamphetamine-cue pictures. This study demonstrated that methamphetamine addicts had emotion-related brain activation abnormalities.

Section snippets

Background

Methamphetamine is a new-generation drug eliciting strong psychological dependence and has been replacing drugs such as gum opium, acetomorphine, bang, cocaine, etc., to become one of the widest drugs of abuse, causing great detriment to users. It can produce long-lasting brain damage; specific damage to dopamine cells has been documented [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. We therefore infer a link between a methamphetamine-craving-related region of the brain and a normal state of dysthymia;

Participants

All methamphetamine addicts, who had been forced to or were willing to quit the drug, were from the Drug Rehabilitation Center of Shantou Public Security in China and were recruited between June 2008 and November 2010. Cases of inclusion, exclusion, and rejection refer to the standard of Jiang Zuoning [6].

Twenty-six methamphetamine addicts were recruited [14 men and 12 women; age range 19–48 years; mean age 24.2±3.8 years; education level 8–16 years; mean education level 12.5±2.6 years; median

Results

Imaging results were based on data from all 26 methamphetamine addicts and 26 healthy subjects in the scanning session. Comparison of the cue-related brain activity in the methamphetamine, sad, and happy condition revealed several areas of activation (Table 1). Among them, anterior cingulate cortex gyrus had the largest activation volume. Robust activation of the anterior cingulate cortex gyrus was evident in patients watching methamphetamine (Fig. 2), but not in patients watching sad (Fig. 3)

Discussion

Addiction is a kind of chronic encephalopathy consisting of a recurrent effect on the cerebrum. One-time use of a drug can activate a specified encephalic region and leave a persistent memory trace. Even after long abstinence, a drug cue can activate reward pathways.

Methamphetamine is a kind of psychoactivator. Acute administration may cause intense temporary euphoria, and repeated administration may result in addiction [7], [8]. The importance of craving experiences in perpetuating human drug

Conclusion

The results of the present study demonstrate that fMRI provides a highly sensitive measure of methamphetamine effect-related brain function in humans. Methamphetamine produced significant region-specific changes in brain activity. Therefore, fMRI detected changes in the behavior and emotion of methamphetamine addicts between pretherapy and posttreatment, which may provide guidance for methamphetamine withdrawal and may detect the effects of withdrawal.

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      Finally, our results on the role of AIV in relapse after voluntary abstinence agree with previous clinical studies on insula’s role in human drug addiction. Thus, in cocaine and methamphetamine addicts, exposure to drug-associated cues increase blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI signal in the insula (Garavan et al., 2000; Yin et al., 2012), and, in nicotine addicts, insula damage decreases relapse rates (Gaznick et al., 2014; Naqvi et al., 2007). One methodological issue is that the effect of systemic or CeA SCH39166 injections on relapse is due to non-specific performance deficits.

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    This study was supported by grants from the National Nature Science Foundation of China (grant number: 81072905), the Nature Science Foundation of Guangdong Province of China (grant numbers: S2011010005019, 10151503102000015), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province of China (grant numbers: 2009B030801323, 2010B031600023), the Traditional Chinese Medicine Administration Foundation of Guangdong Province of China (grant numbers: 2010058, 20111053), and the Shantou Technology Bureau Science Foundation of China [grant number: Shantou government technology (2011)46].

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