ENHANCED INTERFERENCE BETWEEN PAVLOVIAN AND INSTRUMENTAL CONTROL IN ALCOHOL USE DISORDER BUT NOT SMOKING

Previous research demonstrated that Pavlovian cues can interfere with instrumental behavior and cause inadequate approach. More importantly, an increased susceptibility to such Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) effects was linked to alcohol consumption, dependence, and relapse. A recent study by our group suggests that enhanced PIT might be related to an altered interplay between the ventral striatum and control regions, specifically the lateral and dorsomedial PFC. In this study, we investigated whether we can replicate an increased PIT and its neural correlates in prefrontal regions in predominantly mild to moderate AUD and assessed a potential interaction with smoking. We analyzed data from 100 AUD (58% male, age 29.8, >1 AUD criteria) and 100 non-AUD (60% male, age 33.2, <2 AUD criteria) participants, of which 179 underwent functional imaging during a joystick-based PIT task. PIT effects were assessed as the mean error rate differences between incongruent (i.e. conflict between Pavlovian and instrumental control) and congruent (no conflict) trials. As expected, AUD participants exhibited significantly stronger PIT effects than non-AUD participants (p=.01, r=.16) as well as reduced brain responses in the lateral (p=.02, r=.15) and dorsomedial PFC (p=.03, r=.14). In contrast, we found no significant PIT difference between our three smoking groups (p=.68, ƞ²=-.01) nor an interaction between AUD and smoking groups (p=.37, ƞ²_p=.01). Overall, these preliminary findings align with previous reports of enhanced PIT in AUD but provide no evidence of a similar pattern in smoking. They also point towards a critical role of the lPFC in overcoming PIT interference.