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Rationale: Endocannabinoids are well poised to regulate crosstalk between energy sensing of hunger and satiety and reward-driven motivation.
Objectives: Here, we aimed to unravel associations between plasma endocannabinoids and brain connectivity in homeostatic and reward circuits across hunger and satiety states.
Methods: Fifteen participants (7 females) underwent two counter-balanced resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, one after overnight fasting and one after consumption of a standardized filling meal (satiety). Before each scan, we drew blood to measure plasma endocannabinoid concentrations (anandamide [AEA], anandamide-derived POEA, and 2-arachidonoylglycerol [2-AG]), analyzed with liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.
Results: We found that AEA levels were associated with increased connectivity between the lateral hypothalamus and the ventral striatum during satiety. Furthermore, fasting AEA levels correlated with connectivity between the ventral striatum and the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula.
Conclusions: Altogether, results suggest that peripheral AEA concentrations are sensitive to homeostatic changes and linked to neural communication in reward and salience networks. Findings may have significant implications for understanding normal and abnormal interactions between homeostatic input and reward valuation.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00213-021-05890-z | DOI Listing |
Behav Brain Res
September 2025
École de psychologie, Université de Moncton, Faculté des sciences de la santé et des services communautaires. Electronic address:
During Pavlovian conditioning, Sign-Tracker (ST), Goal-Tracker (GT), and Intermediate (IN) phenotypes emerge, as characterized by the degree to which an individual attributes incentive salience to reward-associated cues. These operationally defined phenotypes differ in other respects: In human studies, STs tend to favor bottom-up attention, while GTs tend to favor top-down attention. There is some limited evidence that rats exhibit similar patterns during Pavlovian conditioning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Affect Disord
September 2025
Department of Psychiatry, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; Division of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, College of Medicine, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan; Institute of Brain Science, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan. Electronic addr
Background: In adolescents, the role of functional dysconnectivity in the default mode network (DMN), salience network (SAN), frontoparietal network (FPN), and reward network as markers of borderline personality disorder (BPD) remains uncertain.
Methods: A total of 45 adolescents with BPD comorbid with a mood disorder (bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder), 31 adolescents without BPD but with a mood disorder, and 47 healthy adolescents were enrolled in the study. All participants underwent resting-state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging.
Am J Psychiatry
September 2025
Francis Crick Institute, London, UK.
Alcohol
August 2025
Stress and Addiction Neuroscience Unit, Integrative Neuroscience Research Branch, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Intramural Research Program, and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Division of Intramural Clinical and Biological Research, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Alcohol use disorder is a chronically relapsing disorder that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and is hypothesized to result from multiple sources of motivational dysregulation in a three-stage cycle of addiction (incentive salience/pathological habits, withdrawal/negative affect, and preoccupation/anticipation). One major source of motivation in the withdrawal/negative affect stage is the physical pain and emotional pain of withdrawal and protracted withdrawal that drive pronounced drug-seeking behavior via the process of negative reinforcement. The construct of negative reinforcement is defined as alcohol taking to alleviate both physical pain and emotional pain (hyperkatifeia) that are created by alcohol abstinence following excessive alcohol consumption.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Comp Neurol
August 2025
Department of Anthropology and School of Biomedical Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA.
The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and ventral pallidum (VP) are key nodes in the mesolimbic reward pathway that facilitate stimulus salience, including the regulation of social motivation and attachment. Primate species display variation in social behaviors, including different levels of impulsivity, bonding, and aggression. Previous research has implicated neuromodulation of the reward pathway in the differential expression of various social behaviors, suggesting that differences in neurotransmitter innervation may play a role in species-specific patterns.
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