Diminished reward circuit response underlies pain avoidance learning deficits in problem drinkers.

ABSTRACT: Individuals engaging in problem drinking show impaired proactive pain avoidance. As successful pain avoidance is intrinsically rewarding, this impairment suggests reward deficiency, as hypothesized for those with alcohol and substance misuse. Nevertheless, how reward circuit dysfunctions impact avoidance learning and contribute to drinking behavior remains poorly understood. Here, we combined functional imaging and a probabilistic learning go/nogo task to examine the neural processes underlying proactive pain avoidance learning in 103 adult drinkers. We hypothesized that greater drinking severity would be associated with poorer avoidance learning and that the deficits would be accompanied by weakened activity and connectivity of the reward circuit. Our behavioral findings indeed showed a n

SUBMITTER: Le TM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11908557 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature