The stomach-derived hormone ghrelin plays not only a role in feeding, starvation, and survival, but it has been suggested to also be involved in the stress response, in neuropsychiatric conditions, and in alcohol and drug use disorders. Mechanisms related to reward processing might mediate ghrelin's broader effects on complex behaviors, as indicated by animal studies and mostly correlative human studies. Here, using a within-subject double-blind placebo-controlled design with intravenous ghrelin infusion in healthy volunteers (n = 30), we tested whether ghrelin alters sensitivity to reward and punishment in a reward learning task. Parameters were derived from a computational model of participants' task behavior. The reversal learning task with monetary rewards was performed during functional brain imaging to investigate ghrelin effects on brain signals related to reward prediction errors. Compared to placebo, ghrelin decreased punishment sensitivity (t = -2.448, p = 0.021), while reward sensitivity was unaltered (t = 0.8, p = 0.43). We furthermore found increased prediction-error related activity in the dorsal striatum during ghrelin administration (region of interest analysis: t-values >= 4.21, p-values <= 0.044). Our results support a role for ghrelin in reward processing that extends beyond food-related rewards. Reduced sensitivity to negative outcomes and increased processing of prediction errors may be beneficial for food foraging when hungry but could also relate to increased risk taking and impulsivity in the broader context of addictive behaviors.

BACKGROUND. The stomach-derived hormone ghrelin stimulates appetite, but the ghrelin receptor is also expressed in brain circuits involved in motivation and reward. We examined ghrelin effects on decision making beyond food or drug reward using monetary rewards. METHODS. Thirty participants (50% women and 50% men) underwent 2 fMRI scans while receiving i.v. ghrelin or saline in a randomized counterbalanced order. RESULTS. Striatal representations of reward anticipation were unaffected by ghrelin, while activity during anticipation of losses was attenuated. Temporal discounting rates of monetary reward were lower overall in the ghrelin condition, an effect driven by women. Discounting rates were inversely correlated with neural activity in a large cluster within the left parietal lobule that included the angular gyrus. Activity in an overlapping cluster was related to behavioral choices and was suppressed by ghrelin. CONCLUSION. This is, to our knowledge, the first human study to extend the understanding of ghrelins significance beyond the canonical feeding domain or in relation to addictive substances. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that ghrelin did not affect sensitivity to monetary reward anticipation, but rather resulted in attenuated loss aversion and lower discounting rates for these rewards. Ghrelin may cause a motivational shift toward caloric reward rather than globally promoting the value of reward. TRIAL REGISTRATION. EudraCT 2018-004829-82.

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is a risk factor for substance use disorders (SUD) in adulthood. Understanding the mechanisms by which people are susceptible or resilient to developing SUD after exposure to CM is important for improving intervention. This case-control study investigated the impact of prospectively assessed CM on biomarkers of endocannabinoid function and emotion regulation in relation to the susceptibility or resilience to developing SUD. Four groups were defined across the dimensions of CM and lifetime SUD (N = 101 in total). After screening, participants completed two experimental sessions on separate days, aimed at assessing the behavioral, physiological, and neural mechanisms involved in emotion regulation. In the first session, participants engaged in tasks assessing biochemical (i.e., cortisol, endocannabinoids), behavioral, and psychophysiological indices of stress and affective reactivity. During the second session, the behavioral and brain mechanisms associated with emotion regulation and negative affect were investigated using magnetic resonance imaging. CM-exposed adults who did not develop SUD, operationally defined as resilient to developing SUD, had higher peripheral levels of the endocannabinoid anandamide at baseline and during stress exposure, compared to controls. Similarly, this group had increased activity in salience and emotion regulation regions in task-based measures of emotion regulation compared to controls, and CM-exposed adults with lifetime SUD. At rest, the resilient group also showed significantly greater negative connectivity between ventromedial prefrontal cortex and anterior insula compared to controls and CM-exposed adults with lifetime SUD. Collectively, these peripheral and central findings point to mechanisms of potential resilience to developing SUD after documented CM exposure.

Social drinking is common, but it is unclear how moderate levels of alcohol influence decision making. Most prior studies have focused on adverse long-term effects on cognitive and executive function in people with alcohol use disorders (AUD). Some studies have investigated the acute effects of alcohol on decision making in healthy people, but have predominantly used small samples and focused on a narrow selection of tasks related to personal decision making, e.g., delay or probability discounting. Here, we conducted a large (n = 264), preregistered randomized placebo-controlled study (RCT) using a parallel group design, to systematically assess the acute effects of alcohol on measures of decision making in both personal and social domains. We found a robust effect of a 0.6 g/kg dose of alcohol on both moral judgment and altruistic behavior, but no effects on several measures of risk taking or waiting impulsivity. These findings suggest that alcohol at low to moderate doses selectively moderates decision making in the social domain, and promotes utilitarian decisions over those dictated by rule-based ethical principles (deontological). This is consistent with existing theory that emphasizes the dual roles of shortsighted information processing and salient social cues in shaping decisions made under the influence of alcohol. A better understanding of these effects is important to understand altered social functioning during alcohol intoxication.

Considerable data relate major depressive disorder (MDD) with aberrant immune system functioning. Pro inflammatory cytokines facilitate metabolism of tryptophan along the kynurenine pathway (KP) putatively resulting in reduced neuroprotective and increased neurotoxic KP metabolites in MDD, in addition to modulating metabolic and immune function. This central nervous system hypothesis has, however, only been tested in the periphery. Here, we measured KP-metabolite levels in both plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of depressed patients (n = 63/36 respectively) and healthy controls (n = 48/33). Further, we assessed the relation between KP abnormalities and brain-structure volumes, as well as body mass index (BMI), an index of metabolic disturbance associated with atypical depression. Plasma levels of picolinic acid (PIC), the kynurenic/quinolinic acid ratio (KYNA/QUIN), and PIC/QUIN were lower in MDD, but QUIN levels were increased. In the CSF, we found lower PIC in MDD. Confirming previous work, MDD patients had lower hippocampal, and amygdalar volumes. Hippocampal and amygdalar volumes were correlated positively with plasma KYNA/QUIN ratio in MDD patients. BMI was increased in the MDD group relative to the control group. Moreover, BMI was inversely correlated with plasma and CSF PIC and PIC/QUIN, and positively correlated with plasma QUIN levels in MDD. Our results partially confirm previous peripheral KP findings and extend them to the CSF in MDD. We present the novel finding that abnormalities in KP metabolites are related to metabolic disturbances in depression, but the relation between KP metabolites and depression-associated brain atrophy might not be as direct as previously hypothesized.

Maladaptive stress responses are a key feature of several psychiatric disorders, but findings of stress effects on social behavior are inconsistent. Using a within-subject design, we investigated, in 35 healthy participants, the effects of acute stress on psychophysiological and behavioral responses during a simulated online social interaction task. Participants were exposed to established stress and non-stress exposure procedures in two separate sessions. During the task, participants liked or disliked pictures of other putative players and, similarly, saw their own picture being judged by others. After stress exposure, corrugator muscle activity (frowning) was significantly increased when participants saw their own picture while anticipating feedback from others. Consistently, zygomatic muscle activity (smiling) for self-evaluation was lower after stress than in the non-stress session. We found self-report of stress to be a significant predictor of corrugator activity in both sessions, indicating that higher levels of subjective stress overall were accompanied by increased negative self-evaluation. Surprisingly, no stress effects were found on behavioral measures of other-evaluation (i.e., percentage of dislikes to others), but corrugator response significantly predicted the percentage of dislikes during the stress session only. Overall, our findings suggest that stress increases negative self-evaluation as indexed by elevated corrugator activity. Furthermore, stress might sharpen the consistency between corrugator activity and negative evaluation of others. Our results indicate that negative self-evaluation might be a useful therapeutic target in patients with stressrelated psychiatric disorders. In this context, facial muscle activity may be an adequate biomarker for identifying stress-related differences in self-evaluation.