TY - JOUR PY - 2018// TI - No association of goal-directed and habitual control with alcohol consumption in young adults JO - Addiction biology A1 - Nebe, Stephan A1 - Kroemer, Nils B. A1 - Schad, Daniel J. A1 - Bernhardt, Nadine A1 - Sebold, Miriam A1 - Müller, Dirk K. A1 - Scholl, Lucie A1 - Kuitunen-Paul, Sören A1 - Heinz, Andreas A1 - Rapp, Michael A. A1 - Huys, Quentin J. M. A1 - Smolka, Michael N. SP - 379 EP - 393 VL - 23 IS - 1 N2 - Alcohol dependence is a mental disorder that has been associated with an imbalance in behavioral control favoring model-free habitual over model-based goal-directed strategies. It is as yet unknown, however, whether such an imbalance reflects a predisposing vulnerability or results as a consequence of repeated and/or excessive alcohol exposure. We, therefore, examined the association of alcohol consumption with model-based goal-directed and model-free habitual control in 188 18-year-old social drinkers in a two-step sequential decision-making task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging before prolonged alcohol misuse could have led to severe neurobiological adaptations. Behaviorally, participants showed a mixture of model-free and model-based decision-making as observed previously. Measures of impulsivity were positively related to alcohol consumption. In contrast, neither model-free nor model-based decision weights nor the trade-off between them were associated with alcohol consumption. There were also no significant associations between alcohol consumption and neural correlates of model-free or model-based decision quantities in either ventral striatum or ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Exploratory whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses with a lenient threshold revealed early onset of drinking to be associated with an enhanced representation of model-free reward prediction errors in the posterior putamen. These results suggest that an imbalance between model-based goal-directed and model-free habitual control might rather not be a trait marker of alcohol intake per se.

© 2017 Society for the Study of Addiction.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1355-6215 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/adb.12490 ID - ref1 ER -