Heroin addiction engages negative emotional learning brain circuits in rats
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Leandro F. Vendruscolo; Janaina C. M. Vendruscolo; Hanbing Lu; Robin J. Keeley; Stephanie A. Carmack; Elliot A. Stein; Emily G. Lowery-Gionta; George F. Koob
- Source
- Journal of Clinical Investigation. 129:2480-2484
- Subject
- Male
0301 basic medicine
media_common.quotation_subject
Emotions
Hypothalamus
Amygdala
Heroin
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Neuroimaging
medicine
Animals
Learning
Rats, Long-Evans
media_common
medicine.diagnostic_test
Heroin Dependence
Addiction
Concise Communication
Opioid use disorder
General Medicine
medicine.disease
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Drug Abstinence
Rats
Substance Withdrawal Syndrome
030104 developmental biology
medicine.anatomical_structure
Opioid
030220 oncology & carcinogenesis
Nerve Net
Psychology
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Neuroscience
medicine.drug
- Language
- ISSN
- 1558-8238
0021-9738
Opioid use disorder (OUD) is associated with the emergence of persistent negative emotional states during drug abstinence that drive compulsive drug taking and seeking. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in rats identified neurocircuits that were activated by stimuli that were previously paired with heroin withdrawal. The activation of amygdala and hypothalamic circuits was related to the degree of heroin dependence, supporting the significance of conditioned negative affect in sustaining compulsive-like heroin seeking and taking and providing neurobiological insights into the drivers of the current opioid crisis.