Go to JCI Insight
  • About
  • Editors
  • Consulting Editors
  • For authors
  • Publication ethics
  • Publication alerts by email
  • Advertising
  • Job board
  • Contact
  • Clinical Research and Public Health
  • Current issue
  • Past issues
  • By specialty
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Gastroenterology
    • Immunology
    • Metabolism
    • Nephrology
    • Neuroscience
    • Oncology
    • Pulmonology
    • Vascular biology
    • All ...
  • Videos
    • Conversations with Giants in Medicine
    • Video Abstracts
  • Reviews
    • View all reviews ...
    • Complement Biology and Therapeutics (May 2025)
    • Evolving insights into MASLD and MASH pathogenesis and treatment (Apr 2025)
    • Microbiome in Health and Disease (Feb 2025)
    • Substance Use Disorders (Oct 2024)
    • Clonal Hematopoiesis (Oct 2024)
    • Sex Differences in Medicine (Sep 2024)
    • Vascular Malformations (Apr 2024)
    • View all review series ...
  • Viewpoint
  • Collections
    • In-Press Preview
    • Clinical Research and Public Health
    • Research Letters
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Editorials
    • Commentaries
    • Editor's notes
    • Reviews
    • Viewpoints
    • 100th anniversary
    • Top read articles

  • Current issue
  • Past issues
  • Specialties
  • Reviews
  • Review series
  • Conversations with Giants in Medicine
  • Video Abstracts
  • In-Press Preview
  • Clinical Research and Public Health
  • Research Letters
  • Letters to the Editor
  • Editorials
  • Commentaries
  • Editor's notes
  • Reviews
  • Viewpoints
  • 100th anniversary
  • Top read articles
  • About
  • Editors
  • Consulting Editors
  • For authors
  • Publication ethics
  • Publication alerts by email
  • Advertising
  • Job board
  • Contact
Heroin addiction engages negative emotional learning brain circuits in rats
Stephanie A. Carmack, … , Elliot A. Stein, Leandro F. Vendruscolo
Stephanie A. Carmack, … , Elliot A. Stein, Leandro F. Vendruscolo
Published March 26, 2019
Citation Information: J Clin Invest. 2019;129(6):2480-2484. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI125534.
View: Text | PDF
Concise Communication Neuroscience Article has an altmetric score of 13

Heroin addiction engages negative emotional learning brain circuits in rats

  • Text
  • PDF
Abstract

Opioid use disorder is associated with the emergence of persistent negative emotional states during drug abstinence that drive compulsive drug taking and seeking. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in rats identified neurocircuits that were activated by stimuli that were previously paired with heroin withdrawal. The activation of amygdala and hypothalamic circuits was related to the degree of heroin dependence, supporting the significance of conditioned negative affect in sustaining compulsive-like heroin seeking and taking and providing neurobiological insights into the drivers of the current opioid crisis.

Authors

Stephanie A. Carmack, Robin J. Keeley, Janaina C. M. Vendruscolo, Emily G. Lowery-Gionta, Hanbing Lu, George F. Koob, Elliot A. Stein, Leandro F. Vendruscolo

×

Figure 1

Conditioned heroin withdrawal engages negative emotional learning neurocircuits.

Options: View larger image (or click on image) Download as PowerPoint
Conditioned heroin withdrawal engages negative emotional learning neuroc...
(A) Heroin intake during ShA and LgA self-administration sessions. A significant heroin-access × session interaction was observed (F9,171 = 4.25, P = 0.002; 2-way repeated-measures ANOVA). (B) Heroin intake following saline (0 μg/kg, s.c.) or naloxone (Nx) (120 μg/kg, s.c.) treatments during cue pairings, presented as the average of the 4 cue pairings per treatment. Significant main effects of treatment (F1,19 = 35.5, P < 0.0001) and heroin access (F1,19 = 4.215, P = 0.05) were found (2-way repeated-measures ANOVA). (C) Statistical map (F values) of the cue × heroin-access BOLD signal interaction following whole-brain 3-way ANCOVA, with respiration as the covariate (P < 0.01; 233 voxels, corrected for multiple comparisons). The upsampled (to anatomical images) statistical map is superimposed on anatomical coronal images from a representative subject. Below each section is the anterior-posterior distance from bregma (in mm). Data represent mean ± SEM. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001 (different from session 1 and corrected for multiple comparisons in A). n = 11 ShA rats; n = 10 LgA rats.

Copyright © 2025 American Society for Clinical Investigation
ISSN: 0021-9738 (print), 1558-8238 (online)

Sign up for email alerts

Picked up by 1 news outlets
Posted by 7 X users
Highlighted by 1 platforms
49 readers on Mendeley
See more details