Habitual Alcohol Seeking: Neural Bases and Possible Relations to Alcohol Use Disorders

Abstract

Loss of flexible control over alcohol use may contribute to the development of Alcohol Use Disorders. An increased contribution of response habits to alcohol- related behaviors may help explain this loss of control. Focusing on data from outcome devaluation and Pavlovian-instrumental transfer procedures, we review evidence for loss of goal-directed control over alcohol seeking and consumption drawing from both preclinical findings and clinical data where they exist. Over the course of extended alcohol self-administration and exposure, the performance of alcohol-seeking responses becomes less sensitive to reductions in the value of alcohol and more vulnerable to the influences of alcohol-predictive stimuli. These behavioral changes are accompanied by a shift in the corticostriatal circuits that control responding from circuits centered on the dorsomedial to those centered on the dorsolateral striatum. These changes in behavioral and neural control could help explain failures to abstain from alcohol despite intention to do so. Understanding and ultimately ameliorating these changes will aid development of more effective treatment interventions.

A paradigm for examining stress effects on alcohol‐motivated behaviors in participants with alcohol use disorder

“…In the current experimental paradigm, participants responded faster for the reinforcer and made fewer switches between reinforcers following stress. The hyper‐focused and ultra‐repetitive behaviors of rapid mouse clicking with limited or no changeovers following the stress condition are consistent with the emergence of habitual behaviors and the activation of habit forming neurocircuitry reported in preclinical and clinical studies (Schwabe and Wolf, 2011; Corbit & Janak ). These alcohol‐induced behavioral changes, which most likely result from alterations in neural circuitry, may contribute to a weakening of volitional control and a failure to abstain from alcohol.…”

Neural correlates of cue-induced changes in decision-making distinguish subjects with gambling disorder from healthy controls

“…Patients suffering from SUDs have displayed increased PIT (Corbit & Janak, 2016;Corbit, Janak, & Balleine, 2007;Corbit, Nie, & Janak, 2012;Garbusow et al, 2016;Schad et al, 2018), however not in all studies (Hogarth & Chase, 2012). Furthermore, the effect seems to scale with the probability of relapse (Garbusow et al, 2016).…”

Recruitment and disruption of value encoding during alcohol seeking

“…Addiction has been characterized as a shift away from goal-directed behavior based on representations of the outcome value, toward cue-driven reward-seeking that occurs independently of expected outcome value (Everitt et al, 2001;Ostlund and Balleine, 2008;Corbit and Janak, 2016a). This shift leads to perseverative or compulsive drug-seeking despite adverse consequences.…”

“…Further, associative and non-associative consumption may exert dissociable effects on decision-making. For instance, non-associative alcohol exposure has been shown to enhance the incentive motivational properties of cues (Spoelder et al, 2015;Kruse et al, 2017) and increase habit-like responding (Corbit et al, 2012;Corbit and Janak, 2016a;Houck and Grahame, 2018). Thus, it is critical that we determine not just what types of associative processes are engaged by alcohol as a reinforcer, but also the effects non-associative alcohol exposure has on brain mechanisms of learning and decisionmaking.…”