THE ROLE OF THE ORBITOFRONTAL CORTEX (OFC) ON THE ATTENTIONAL BIAS TOWARDS ALCOHOL-RELATED SOUNDS IN YOUNG PROBLEMATIC DRINKERS: PRELIMINARY DATA.

ELIZALDE-ACEVEDO, BAUTISTA; MANASLISKY, LUCIA; BENDERSKY, MARIANA; KOCHEN, SILVIA; ALBA FERRARA, LUCIA

Granada

Congreso; 11th IBRO World Congress of Neuroscience; 2023

IBRO

Background: In alcoholism, alcohol-related stimuli gain salience, involuntarily capturing attention.Methods: To test the neural basis of alcohol salience modulation of auditory attentional control, 10 young problematic drinkers and 10 matched controls (CTL) underwent a forced-choice dichotic listening fMRI task in which an alcohol-related sound was paired with a non-alcohol-related sound; and non-alcohol sounds pairs were baseline. Problematic drinking was measured according to the AUDIT scale. All participants were sober during the test. Participants reported whether the attended ear sound was alcohol-related or not. We calculated whole sample BOLD activations for: a) ‘Alcohol sounds presented to the attended vs. Alcohol sounds presented to the unattended ear’ (congruent minus incongruent), b) ‘Alcohol sounds presented to the unattended vs. Alcohol sounds presented to the attended ear’ (incongruent minus congruent), and c) ‘All alcohol sounds trials minus baseline trials’, additionally performed separately for each group.Results: Both groups discriminated all trial categories above chance level. ‘Congruent minus incongruent’ invoked mesocorticolimbic activation including the right insula, OFC, caudate, thalamus, hippocampus bilaterally and left amygdala. Incongruent minus congruent activated the left cuneus and precuneus, which may underlie higher cognitive control demands and conflict monitoring. ‘All alcohol sounds trials vs. baseline’ invoked mesocorticolimbic activation. When analyzed separately the groups differed, problematic drinkers showed bilateral OFC activation, whereas CTL showed superior and middle frontal activation.Conclusion: Expanding the literature, our novel task demonstrated that orienting attention towards auditory alcohol cues invokes mesocorticolimbic activation, reflecting the subjective evaluation of alcohol rewarding effect. The OFC activation in problematic drinkers when processing alcohol-related sounds may reflect the expected rewarding experience of drinking, underlying unfit decision-making in alcohol abuse.