Descripción del proyecto
Los opiáceos pueden ser más adictivos para las personas con problemas sociales
Una importante investigación ha demostrado que los vínculos sociales estrechos son importantes para una vida feliz y plena, pero pocos han estudiado los mecanismos neurales subyacentes. A medida que la crisis de los opiáceos alcanza proporciones de epidemia, se presta más atención a los opioides naturales presentes en el cerebro. La teoría de los opioides cerebrales de las relaciones sociales de apego sugiere que los opioides son responsables de la satisfacción placentera que viene con la conexión y el vínculo social. Por el contrario, la pérdida o separación social puede reducir su actividad. OPIOIDREWARD está llevando a cabo experimentos pioneros con humanos para determinar si el malestar social preexistente es un factor de riesgo para el abuso de opiáceos. La modelización computacional y las imágenes funcionales complementarán los datos de comportamiento. Los resultados podrían llevar a una evaluación preventiva y quizás una innovación en el ciclo de adicción y muerte.
Objetivo
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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Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
0313 Oslo
Noruega