Abstract
Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is a chronic relapsing condition characterized by excessive alcohol consumption despite its multifaceted adverse consequences, associated with impaired performance in several cognitive domains including decision-making. While choice deficits represent a core component of addictive behavior, possibly consecutive to brain changes preceding the onset of the addiction cycle, the evidence on grey-matter and white-matter damage underlying abnormal choices in AUD is still limited. To fill this gap, we assessed the neurostructural bases of decision-making performance in 22 early-abstinent alcoholic patients and 18 controls, by coupling the Cambridge Gambling Task (CGT) with quantitative magnetic resonance imaging metrics of grey-matter density and white-matter integrity. Regardless of group, voxel based morphometry highlighted an inverse relationship between deliberation time and grey-matter density, with alcoholics displaying slower choices related to grey-matter atrophy in key nodes of the motor control network. In particular, grey-matter density in the supplementary motor area, reduced in alcoholic patients, explained a significant amount of variability in their increased deliberation time. Tract-based spatial statistics revealed a significant relationship between CGT deliberation time and all white-matter indices, involving the most relevant commissural, projection and associative tracts. The lack of choice impairments other than increased deliberation time highlights reduced processing speed, mediated both by grey-matter and white-matter alterations, as a possible marker of a generalized executive impairment extending to the output stages of decision-making. These results pave the way to further studies aiming to tailor novel rehabilitation strategies and assess their functional outcomes.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Dr. Giovanni Vittadini for his valuable contribution in patient recruitment and clinical assessment.
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C.G.: study design; data collection; data analysis; data interpretation; manuscript drafting and review; Dr. Galandra reports no disclosures.
C.C: data analysis; data interpretation; manuscript drafting and review; Dr. Crespi reports no disclosures.
G.B: study design; data collection; manuscript review; Prof. Basso reports no disclosures.
M.R.M.: study design; data collection; manuscript review; Dr. Manera reports no disclosures.
I.G.: study design; data collection; manuscript review; Dr. Giorgi reports no disclosures.
P.P: study design; data collection; manuscript review; Dr. Poggi reports no disclosures.
N.C: study design; data collection; data analysis; data interpretation; manuscript drafting and review; Prof. Canessa reports no disclosures.
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Galandra, C., Crespi, C., Basso, G. et al. Decreased information processing speed and decision-making performance in alcohol use disorder: combined neurostructural evidence from VBM and TBSS. Brain Imaging and Behavior 15, 205–215 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-019-00248-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-019-00248-8