Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) appears to play a crucial role in the reward response to drugs such as heroin. The primary objective of the present study was to examine epigenetic changes and serum levels of BDNF in patients undergoing different opiate-based maintenance treatments. We compared patients receiving treatment with either levomethadone (n = 55) or diamorphine (n = 28) with a healthy control group (n = 51). When comparing all subjects (patients and controls), BDNF serum levels showed a negative correlation with the BDNF IV promoter methylation rate (r = -0.177, p = 0.048). Furthermore, BDNF serum levels negatively correlated with Beck's Depression Inventory measurements (r = -0.177, p < 0.001). Patients receiving diamorphine maintenance treatment showed slightly decreased BDNF serum levels compared to healthy controls, whereas patients on levomethadone maintenance treatment with or without heroine co-use showed a pronounced decrease (analysis of covariance: control vs. levomethadone with and without heroine co-use: p < 0.0001, diamorphine vs. levomethadone with heroine co-use: p = 0.043, diamorphine vs. levomethadone without heroine co-use: p < 0.0001). According to these findings, methylation of the BDNF IV promoter showed the highest level in patients receiving levomethadone without heroine co-use (linear mixed model: control vs. levomethadone group without heroine co-use: p = 0.008, with heroin co-use: p = 0.050, diamorphine vs. levomethadone group with heroine co-use: p = 0.077 and without heroine co-use: p = 0.015.). For the first time, we show an epigenetic mechanism that may provide an explanation for mood destabilization in levomethadone maintenance treatment.
, M (2016) Social responsiveness to inanimate entities: altered white matter in a 'social synaesthesia '. Neuropsychologia, This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/64745/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version. Copyright and reuse:Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University.Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available.Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. 1 Social responsiveness to inanimate entities:Alte ed hite atte i a so ial s aesthesia ABSTRACTJudgments about personalities and social traits can be made by relatively brief exposure to animate living things. Here we show that unusual architecture in the microstructure of the human brain is related to atypical mental projections of personality and social structure onto things that are neither living nor animate. Our participants experience automatic, life-long and consistent crossmodal associations between language sequences (e.g., letters, numbers and days) and complex personifications (e.g., A is a businessman; 7 a good-atu ed o a . Pa ti ipa ts ith this O di al Li guisti Pe so ifi atio "i e & Hu a d, hi h e des i e he e as a fo of so ial synaesthesia, showed lower fractional anisotropy (FA) values in five clusters at whole-brain significance, compared with non-synaesthetes (in the pre-postcentral gyrus/ dorsal corticospinal tract, left superior corona radiata, and the genu, body and left side of the corpus callosum). We found no regions of the brain with increased FA in synaesthetes. A number of these regions with reduced FA play a role in social responsiveness, and our study is the first to show that unusual differences in white matter microstructure in these regions is associated with compelling feelings of social cohesion and personality towards non-animate entities. We show too that altered patterns of connectivity known to t pif s aesthesia a e ot li ited to a ia ts i ol i g a e gi g of the se ses , ut also e te d to 2 what might be thought of as a cogno-social variant of synaesthesia, linking language and personality attributes in this surprising way.
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