No association of goal-directed and habitual control with alcohol consumption in young adults
- 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 significantAlcohol 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.…
Author details: | Stephan NebeORCiD, Nils B. Kroemer, Daniel SchadORCiDGND, Nadine BernhardtORCiD, Miriam SeboldORCiDGND, Dirk K. Mueller, Lucie Scholl, Sören Kuitunen-PaulORCiDGND, Andreas HeinzORCiDGND, Michael A. RappORCiDGND, Quentin J. M. HuysORCiD, Michael N. SmolkaORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1111/adb.12490 |
ISSN: | 1355-6215 |
ISSN: | 1369-1600 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28111829 |
Title of parent work (English): | Addiction biology |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Place of publishing: | Hoboken |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2017/01/23 |
Publication year: | 2017 |
Release date: | 2022/03/09 |
Tag: | alcohol; goal-directed; reinforcement learning |
Volume: | 23 |
Issue: | 1 |
Number of pages: | 15 |
First page: | 379 |
Last Page: | 393 |
Funding institution: | German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG)German Research Foundation (DFG) [FOR 1617, HE 2597/13-1, HE 2597/13-2, HE 2597/15-1, HE 2597/15-2, RA 1047/2-1, RA 1047/2-2, RO 5046/2-2, SCHA 1971/1-2, SM 80/7-1, SM 80/7-2, WI 709/10-1, WI 709/10-2] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Sport- und Gesundheitswissenschaften |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 36 Soziale Probleme, Sozialdienste / 360 Soziale Probleme und Sozialdienste; Verbände |
Peer review: | Referiert |