| Alcohol visual cues are often used to study brain responses to alcohol image stimuli in patients with alcohol use disorder(AUD),also known as cue-reactivity.This response can be used to study the neural mechanism of alcohol psychological craving and find new targets for the treatment of alcohol addiction.Previous studies and research groups often rely on alcohol and neutral pictures found on the internet or created by foreign studies.Some difficulties have been encountered when conducting research on Chinese populations,such as differences in alcohol culture and individual drinking habits between China and the West,the alcohol brand,and the drinking environment.This study firstly planned to establish a visual cue picture set suitable for Chinese AUD patients.The second purpose is to explore the brain responses induced by alcohol cues depicting human drinking actions.The third purpose is to propose a new data-driven classification technique for subgrouping patients with AUD.The specific work and results are as follows:First,a Chinese beverage visual cue picture set was established.The picture cues restore the real-world scene as much as possible.Referring to the method of establishing and evaluating beverage visual cue picture set in similar studies,and based on a crosssectional survey of AUD patients hospitalized in the Substance Dependence Department of Anhui Provincial Mental Health Center,we collected Chinese AUD patients’ preferences on alcohol types,alcohol brands,and drinking behaviors.Then,we collected and photographed 300 pictures,including alcohol,and matched non-alcohol beverages with multiple scenarios(i.e.,drinking action and no drinking action).These images were validated respecting the related perceptual properties and subjectively rated affective by 39 AUD patients.We selected 40 alcohol pictures and 40 matched non-alcohol pictures based on the subjects’ ratings.Compared with non-alcohol pictures,AUD patients reported being more pleasant and having a stronger psychological desire for alcohol when watching alcohol cue pictures.Next,using fMRI study cues to induce brain responses in order to study the effect of alcohol visual pictures containing human drinking action on alcohol cue-reactivity response.We recruited 30 hospitalized AUD patients under an inpatient treatment protocol.They were exposed to alcohol-cue pictures and matched non-alcohol pictures,including pictures with and without a human drinking action("action" and "no-action"),and collected cue-induced brain responses.The results showed that the bilateral temporal cortex of AUD patients was significantly activated when exposed to alcohol-cued pictures containing a person’s drinking action compared to no-action pictures.Interaction effect of analysis of variance(ANOVA)showed a significant beverage type × cue type interaction in the left lingual gyrus.Through cluster correlation analysis,it was found that the activation of the left temporal gyrus and left lingual gyrus were positively correlated with the duration of problematic drinking years.Correlation analysis was further used to establish a link between the duration of problematic drinking years and activation of specific brain regions,including the ventral tegmental area,ventral striatum,dorsal striatum,orbitofrontal cortex,anterior cingulate gyrus,and dorsolateral forehead Leaf cortex.The ROI-based correlation analysis showed that the activation of the dorsolateral striatum was also positively correlated with the duration of problematic drinking years.Then,propose a data-driven classification technique to classify AUD patients according to the brain’s response to alcohol cues.We developed a novel data-driven classification technique to subtype AUD patients.This technique adopts the combination of general linear model(GLM)analysis and hierarchical clustering.Using the cuereactivity fMRI data of the collected 30 AUD patients,the alcohol cue-reactivity average activations of brain regions were extracted and then parcellated using automatic anatomical labeling(AAL)into 140 brain regions.The extracted data was used as an input item for hierarchical clustering analysis.The best cluster number was selected based on an evaluation approach.Based on this,we divided AUD patients into two subgroups in both cue types:Subgroup 1 showed increased activation to alcohol cue reactivity mainly in brain regions related to the reward system;Subgroup 2 showed only decreased activation,mainly in occipital activation.In terms of clinical and demographic data,there was no significant difference between the classified subgroups,suggesting the importance of paying attention to the difference in brain response of AUD patients.In conclusion,this thesis established a Chinese beverage visual cue picture set.Using this picture set in Chinese AUD patients,we deeply studied the brain response induced by alcohol cues depicting human drinking actions in Chinese AUD patients and proposed a data-driven technique to classify the subtypes of AUD patients. |
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