Jessica S. Flannery

TL;DR: This study conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis of structural MRI studies to identify consistent structural alterations associated with chronic smoking and tested the structural–functional hypothesis that smoking-related structural alterations overlapped those same regions showing acute nicotinic drug-induced functional modulations.

TL;DR: Though gaps in the literature remain, these results suggest that naturalistic fMRI paradigms recruit a common set of networks that that allow both separate processing of different streams of information and integration of relevant information to enable flexible cognition and complex behavior.

TL;DR: Meta-analyses suggest a dissociation of brain regions linked with risky- and ambiguous-DM reflecting possible differential functionality and highlight brain alterations potentially contributing to poor decision-making in the context of substance use disorders.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors conducted coordinate-based meta-analyses delineating common and distinct brain activity convergence across cue-reactivity studies (N =196 articles) involving drug (n = 133) or natural (n=63) visual stimuli, and found that drug-distinct convergence was observed in posterior cingulate, dorsolateral prefrontal, and temporo-parietal regions, whereas distinct natural convergence in thalamic, insular, orbitofrontal, and occipital regions.

TL;DR: These outcomes suggest multifaceted brain activity during the cue-reactivity paradigm can be decomposed into more elemental processes and indicate that while drugs of abuse usurp the brain’s natural reward processing system, some regions appear distinctly related to drug cue- reactivity.