Project description
Opioids may be more addictive for people who are socially distressed
Significant research has shown that close social bonds are important for a happy and fulfilled life but few have explored the underlying neural mechanisms. As the opioid crisis reaches epidemic proportions, natural opioids in the brain have gained increased attention. The brain opioid theory of social attachments suggests that opioids are responsible for the pleasurable satisfaction that comes with social connection and bonding. Conversely, social loss or separation can reduce brain opioid activity. OPIOIDREWARD is undertaking pioneering human experiments to determine if pre-existing social distress is a risk factor for opioid abuse. Computational modelling and functional imaging will complement behavioural data. Outcomes could lead to preventive screening and perhaps a break in the cycle of addiction and death.
Objective
As the opioid epidemic escalates, we must ask: why are opioids so addictive? Non-human animal research links addiction with the powerful relief opioids can offer to animals in distress. In humans, epidemiological and clinical studies converge upon social stressors and a poor social support network as key risk factors for addiction. Despite this, it is currently unknown how pre-drug distress might alter opioid drug effects. Tremendous resources are dedicated to charting how people feel after taking a drug, sidestepping the potentially profound influence of how people feel before they take the drug. Here, I will turn the current approach on its head. Using acute social distress induction before morphine administration in healthy humans, I will create a human model to determine the psychological, physiological and brain underpinnings of how social stressors increase opioids’ abuse liability.
First, I will test the hypothesis that pre-drug distress enhances drug wanting (self-administration) but not drug liking (self-report) compared to drug effects in a control condition. Second, I will use opioid blockade to confirm or falsify the hypothesis that opioid drugs ‘hijack’ brain mechanisms underpinning social support. Third, I will determine to what extent opioid drug effects are dopamine-dependent by blocking dopamine before morphine administration. I will also apply computational modelling and functional imaging to elucidate the underlying brain mechanisms. Thus, the proposal offers a powerful new methodology for resolving hotly debated questions on the independent contributions of opioids and dopamine for reward and abuse liability.
In sum, the project aims to achieve a breakthrough in our understanding of how a pre-drug social distress state can alter opioid drug mechanisms. The mechanistic understanding arising from this project could have profound implications for science, as well as for clinical care and new policies designed to contain the opioid epidemic.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
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ERC-STG - Starting Grant
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2018-STG
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0313 Oslo
Norway
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