ACTION IN SCOTLAND –
May 14, 2025 – Researchers have found that a brain region that is implicated extensively in value-based decision-making and craving in people with heroin use disorder – shows synchronized responses biased towards drug content, outcompeting other typical subjects of attention and motivation, in individuals with heroin use disorder who watched “Trainspotting,” the 1996 movie about people who use heroin in Scotland.
Importantly, the research team also found that the OFC’s bias toward drug stimuli was significantly reduced in people who underwent treatment/abstinence from drugs. The study results appear in the May issue of Brain.
A core process in drug addiction is maladaptive salience attribution—the process by which the brain selectively focuses motivated attention on certain stimuli and gives them a sense of importance, often at the expense of other stimuli—to drug cues. In other words, with repeated drug use, drug-related stimuli, cues, and context begin to outcompete other typical rewards and reinforcers—such as food, sex, or social connection—for attention and motivation. In effect, for individuals with drug addiction, their reinforcing environment begins to “shrink” to become narrowly focused on drugs.
