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Conscious and unconscious brain responses to food and cocaine cues

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Abstract

Visual presentation of appetitive and negative cues triggers fast responses in the human brain. Here we assessed functional MRI (fMRI) responses to food, cocaine, and neutral cues presented at a subliminal (“unconscious”, 33 ms) and supraliminal (“conscious”, 750 and 3000 ms) level in healthy, cocaine naïve volunteers. Because there is evidence of circadian variability in reward sensitivity, our second aim was to assess diurnal variability in the brain’s reactivity to cues. Sixteen participants completed two randomly ordered fMRI sessions (once 9-11 AM and another 5–7 PM). in which food, cocaine, and neutral cues were presented for 33, 750 and 3000 ms. Participants rated food cues as positive and “wanted” (more so in evenings than mornings), and cocaine cues as negative (no diurnal differences). fMRI showed occipital cortex activation for food>neutral, cocaine>neutral and cocaine>food; dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for cocaine>neutral and cocaine>food, and midbrain for cocaine>food (all pFWE < 0.05). When comparing unconscious (33 ms) > conscious (750 and 3000 ms) presentations, we observed significant differences for cocaine>neutral and cocaine>food in occipital cortex, for cocaine>neutral in the insula/temporal lobe, and for food>neutral in the middle temporal gyrus (pFWE < 0.05). No diurnal differences for brain activations were observed. We interpret these findings to suggest that negative items (e.g., cocaine) might be perceived at a faster speed than positive ones (e.g., food), although we cannot rule out that the higher saliency of cocaine cues, which would be novel to non-drug using individuals, contributed to the faster speed of detection.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Karen Torres, Lori Talagala, Nancy Diazgranados, Tom Lionetti, Dave Spero, Yvonne Horneffer, and Minoo McFarland for their contributions.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (Y1AA-3009 to NDV).

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Correspondence to Corinde E. Wiers or Nora D. Volkow.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the NIH IRB (white panel) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wiers, C.E., Zhao, J., Manza, P. et al. Conscious and unconscious brain responses to food and cocaine cues. Brain Imaging and Behavior 15, 311–319 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00258-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00258-x

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