Changes in functional connectivity of ventral anterior cingulate cortex in heroin abusers.

BACKGROUND

Previous studies with animal experiments, autopsy, structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and task-related functional MRI (fMRI) have confirmed that brain functional connectivity in addicts has become impaired. The goal of this study was to investigate the alteration of resting-state functional connectivity of the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC) in the heroin abusers' brain.

METHODS

Fifteen heroin abusers and fifteen matched healthy volunteers were studied using vACC as the region-of interest (ROI) seed. A 3.0 T scanner with a standard head coil was the imagining apparatus. T2*-weighted gradient-echo planar imaging (GRE-EPI) was the scanning protocol. A ROI seed based correlation analysis used a SPM5 software package as the tool for all images processing.

RESULTS

This study showed a functional connection to the insula vACC in heroin abusers. Compared with controls, heroin users showed decreased functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and vACC, between the parahippocampala gyrus/amgdala (PHC/amygdala) and vACC, between the thalamus and vACC, and between the posterior cingulated cortex/precuneus (PCC/pC) and vACC.

CONCLUSION

The altered resting-state functional connectivity to the vACC suggests the neural circuitry on which the addictive drug has an affect and reflects the dysfunction of the addictive brain.