Understanding the neural markers of incentive salience for alcohol: the role of context in brain-behavior relationships

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Understanding incentive salience for alcohol cues—a “wanting” of alcohol driven by a strong association between alcohol-related cues and a reward—is of critical importance for understanding the etiology of alcohol use disorder (AUD). Enhanced incentive salience for alcohol cues is among the more powerful and immediate precipitating factors driving alcohol use and, over the longer term, has been implicated in development of AUD. Thus, understanding incentive salience for alcohol has emerged as a research priority within addiction science. While studies utilizing fMRI and EEG to investigate incentive salience have consistently identified heightened incentive salience for alcohol as a neural marker of problem alcohol use, these neuroimaging investigations have exclusively measured incentive salience devoid of context. Consequently, there is a critical gap in understanding how this individual-level marker unfolds in real-world settings, where individuals are exposed to a diverse array of alcohol-related stimuli. Therefore, whether incentive salience, as measured via laboratory neuroimaging methods, holds genuine relevance to alcohol use behaviors in individuals’ everyday life remains unknown. The proposed research aims to fill this gap in the literature by leveraging a combined laboratory-ambulatory study design, in a sample of young adult heavy drinkers. More specifically, we will characterize the brain-behavior mechanisms of incentive salience driving alcohol use behaviors in everyday life. Here we extend beyond the laboratory, utilizing not only fMRI and ERP measures of incentive salience but also ambulatory biosensor technology to capture alcohol use behaviors in real world context. Further, in line with NIAAA’s stated goal to examine “how alcohol-related neurobiological and behavioral phenotypes interact with the environment to affect alcohol-related outcomes” (NIAAA Strategic Plan 2017-2021), we will examine how features of everyday drinking contexts may moderate the relationship between incentive salience and alcohol use levels. To achieve this end, the proposed study will utilize innovative ambulatory photograph methods to better characterize the physical and social context of drinking. As an important step toward a contextually-informed, yet mechanistically precise model for understanding AUD etiology, the proposed research has multiple critical implications. In the conceptual realm, findings will inform theoretical models of AUD (e.g., incentive sensitization theory) that may strengthen our understanding of mechanisms underlying AUD development and maintenance. In the clinical realm, findings will inform assessment, prevention, and intervention efforts, by refining the understanding of both individual- and contextual- level risk factors for problem drinking in real-world settings. Finally, in the methodological realm, the proposed research offers a novel experimental paradigm to alcohol researchers, by leveraging the mechanistic precision of neuroimaging techniques and the ecological validity of ambulatory momentary assessment.