CPDD 78th Annual Scientific Meeting Program

SYMPOSIA
Thursday, June 16
XV:
Risky business: Neurobiological mechanisms of risky decision making
in drug abuse and addiction
Chairs: Shelly Su and Carlos Blanco
Individuals with substance use disorders exhibit deficits in executive function,
including the inability to think flexibly, to update and manipulate information, and to
inhibit choices and actions that are irrelevant to the current goals. New and exciting
findings indicate a relationship between drug abuse vulnerability and risk preference,
or the preference for an uncertain delivery of a large reward over certain delivery of a
small reward. The purpose of this symposium is to showcase this emerging area of
research and highlight the neural circuitry subserving drug-induced risky decision
making in basic animal and human-based laboratory research. The symposium will
begin with data characterizing the neural systems that integrate information regarding
cost/benefit analysis in a probabilistic discounting task in healthy, drug-naïve rodents.
Building upon this neural circuitry, evidence will be presented for a bi-directional
relationship between risky decision making and cocaine self-administration in rodents
and the contributions of dopamine signaling to this association. Behavioral and
neuroimaging data from healthy and methamphetamine-dependent participants
engaging in the Balloon Analog Risk Task, which parallels the same cognitive deficits
and neural networks observed in rodent models, will be presented. A translational
perspective and data on altered risk perceptions and changes in neural patterns of
activity in drug-dependent individuals will be discussed.