@article{NebeKroemerSchadetal.2017,
  author    = {Nebe, Stephan and Kroemer, Nils B. and Schad, Daniel and Bernhardt, Nadine and Sebold, Miriam Hannah and Mueller, Dirk K. and Scholl, Lucie and Kuitunen-Paul, S{\"o}ren and Heinz, Andreas and Rapp, Michael A. and Huys, Quentin J. M. and Smolka, Michael N.},
  title     = {No association of goal-directed and habitual control with alcohol consumption in young adults},
  series = {Addiction biology},
  volume    = {23},
  journal   = {Addiction biology},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {Wiley},
  address   = {Hoboken},
  issn      = {1355-6215},
  doi       = {10.1111/adb.12490},
  pages     = {379 -- 393},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Alcohol dependence is a mental disorder that has been associated with an imbalance in behavioral control favoring model-free habitual over model-based goal-directed strategies. It is as yet unknown, however, whether such an imbalance reflects a predisposing vulnerability or results as a consequence of repeated and/or excessive alcohol exposure. We, therefore, examined the association of alcohol consumption with model-based goal-directed and model-free habitual control in 188 18-year-old social drinkers in a two-step sequential decision-making task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging before prolonged alcohol misuse could have led to severe neurobiological adaptations. Behaviorally, participants showed a mixture of model-free and model-based decision-making as observed previously. Measures of impulsivity were positively related to alcohol consumption. In contrast, neither model-free nor model-based decision weights nor the trade-off between them were associated with alcohol consumption. There were also no significant associations between alcohol consumption and neural correlates of model-free or model-based decision quantities in either ventral striatum or ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Exploratory whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses with a lenient threshold revealed early onset of drinking to be associated with an enhanced representation of model-free reward prediction errors in the posterior putamen. These results suggest that an imbalance between model-based goal-directed and model-free habitual control might rather not be a trait marker of alcohol intake per se.},
  language  = {en}
}