Original ArticleFunctional magnetic resonance imaging of methamphetamine craving☆
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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2018, Drug and Alcohol DependenceCitation Excerpt :At the start of this project, there were still no published studies of cue reactivity in amphetamine dependent patients. Since then, three fMRI studies with methamphetamine users have appeared (Courtney et al., 2016; Malcolm et al., 2016; Yin et al., 2012). However, two of these studies did not require the participants to fulfill diagnostic criteria for amphetamine dependence (Courtney et al., 2016; Yin et al., 2012), and their cases generally represent mild or moderate addiction severity.
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2017, NeuronCitation Excerpt :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].