Yuan Ma1, Chunming Xie1,2, Wenjun Li1, Lin Ma3, Zheng Yang4, Shi-Jiang Li1
1Biophysics, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA; 2Neurology, School of Clinical Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China; 3Radiology, PLA Hospital, Beijing, China; 4Beijing Insititute of Basic Medicine Science, Beijing, China
Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies concerning addiction have demonstrated that amygdala is instrumental in drug consumption, regulation of drug reward and craving. However, little is known about the neural correlates of heroin dosage in heroin user subjects. In this study, we utilized resting-state functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI) to investigate relationship of the alteration in the amygdala functional connectivity (AFC) and determine the associated regions with consumed heroin dosage in heroin users. This work highlights that the altered AFC network is associated with the neural process of regulating the addictive behavior. It is suggested that the fcMRI method could be applied to evaluate the consequence of heroin use and related alteration in brain circuitry.