Background: \- People who are dependent on alcohol drink even when they know something bad might happen. Researchers want to learn more about why they do this. Objectives: \- To study brain response when a person plays a game in different threat conditions. Eligibility: * Healthy right-handed adult heavy drinkers age 21 60 * Healthy right-handed adult light drinkers age 21 60 Design: * Participants will be screened with medical history, physical exam, and blood and urine tests. They will have an EKG and psychiatric interview. * Participants will have one or two clinic visits. * Participants will be asked about their alcohol drinking. * They will choose a snack and alcoholic beverage that they must drink in 5 minutes. After their breath alcohol content (BrAC) is zero, they will play a game in the MRI scanner. * The scanner is a metal cylinder that takes pictures of the brain. Participants lie on a table that slides in and out of the cylinder. They will be in it for about 90 minutes, lying still for up to 20 minutes. * During the MRI, participants will play a simple computer game to earn food or drink points under different threats of electric shock. Points can be exchanged for food or alcohol after the game. Sometimes, participants will receive a mild electric shock through a metal disk on the wrist. Electric shocks will only happen if the participant tries to earn a reward point. * After the MRI, participants use their points for another drink and snack. They will stay at the clinic until their BrAC is low, usually within 3 hours. Participants cannot drive themselves home. * Participants will have a follow-up phone call the next day.
Objective: Continued drug seeking despite knowledge of adverse consequences is a hallmark of addiction. To model this behavior, we will refine the parameters of a modified Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task that will allow us to investigate neural substrates of approach-avoidance conflict resolution. We will then use this task to investigate functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain activation during pursuit of reward in heavy and light drinkers. Study Population: Healthy non-treatment-seeking heavy drinkers and healthy light drinkers aged 21 to 60. Design: The study will require 1 to 2 visits. Subjects will play a modified MID task called Reward Incentive Delay with Shock (RIDS) to measure motivation to earn cue reward points in conditions that are signaled to be safe or associated with a threat. After playing the RIDS task subjects will be able to self-administer alcohol and/or food based on the reward points earned during the task. Outcome measures: The outcome measures are differences in behavioral task performance and in blood oxygenation dependent level (BOLD) signal measured using standard fMRI techniques and analyzed using AFNI software.
Study Type
OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment
62
National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, 9000 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland, United States
fMRI BOLD signal differences between heavy and light drinkers during reward and threat task.
fMRI and behavioral differences between light drinkers and heavy drinkers.
Time frame: Mainly the fMRI and behavioral data collected at the time of enrollment
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