Opioid antagonism modulates wanting-related frontostriatal connectivity

Abstract
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Abstract

Theoretical accounts distinguish between motivational ('wanting') and hedonic ('liking') dimensions of rewards. Previous animal and human research linked wanting and liking to anatomically and neurochemically distinct brain mechanisms, but it remains unknown how the different brain regions and neurotransmitter systems interact in processing distinct reward dimensions. Here, we assessed how pharmacological manipulations of opioid and dopamine receptor activation modulate the neural processing of wanting and liking in humans in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial. Reducing opioid receptor activation with naltrexone selectively reduced wanting of rewards, which on a neural level was reflected by stronger coupling between dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the striatum under naltrexone compared with placebo. In contrast, reducing dopaminergic neurotransmission with amisulpride revealed no robust effects on behavior or neural activity. Our findings thus provide insights into how opioid receptors mediate neural connectivity related to specifically motivational, not hedonic, aspects of rewards.

Data availability

The behavioral data that support the findings of this study are available on Open Science Framework https://osf.io/6cevt/

Article and author information

Author details

Alexander Soutschek

Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Munich, Germany

For correspondence
alexander.soutschek@psy.lmu.de

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8438-7721
Susanna C Weber

University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Thorsten Kahnt

Department of Neurology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, United States

Competing interests
Thorsten Kahnt, Reviewing editor, eLife.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3575-2670
Boris B Quednow

University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Philippe N Tobler

University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

Funding

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (Grants 10001C_188878,100019_176016,and 100014_165884)

Philippe N Tobler

Velux Stiftung (981)

Philippe N Tobler

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SO 1636/2-1)

Alexander Soutschek

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: All participants provided written informed consent. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the canton of Zurich (KEK-ZH-NR2012-0347).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.