Dissociated effects of anticipating smoking versus monetary reward in the caudate as a function of smoking abstinence

摘要

BackgroundTheories of addiction suggest that chronic smoking may be associated with both hypersensitivity to smoking and related cues and hyposensitivity to alternative reinforcers. However, neural responses to smoking and non-smoking rewards are rarely evaluated within the same paradigm, leaving the extent to which both processes operate simultaneously uncertain. Furthermore, behavioral evidence and theoretical models suggests that dysregulated reward processing may be more pronounced during deprivation from nicotine, but neuroimaging evidence on the effects of deprivation on reward processing is limited. The current study examined the impact of deprivation from smoking on neural processing of both smoking and monetary rewards.