Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Jan;27(1):e13069.
doi: 10.1111/adb.13069. Epub 2021 Jun 15.

Test-retest reliability of neural alcohol cue-reactivity: Is there light at the end of the magnetic resonance imaging tube?

Patrick Bach  1   2 , Iris Reinhard  3 , Anne Koopmann  1   2 , Jan M Bumb  1   2 , Wolfgang H Sommer  1   4 , Sabine Vollstädt-Klein  1 , Falk Kiefer  1   2
Affiliations

Test-retest reliability of neural alcohol cue-reactivity: Is there light at the end of the magnetic resonance imaging tube?

Patrick Bach et al. Addict Biol. 2022 Jan.

Abstract

Over the last decades, the assessment of alcohol cue-reactivity gained popularity in addiction research, and efforts were undertaken to establish neural biomarkers. This attempt however depends on the reliability of cue-induced brain activation. Thus, we assessed test-retest reliability of alcohol cue-reactivity and its implications for imaging studies in addiction. We investigated test-retest reliability of alcohol cue-induced brain activation in 144 alcohol-dependent patients over 2 weeks. We computed established reliability estimates, such as intraclass correlation (ICC), Dice and Jaccard coefficients, for the three contrast conditions of interest: 'alcohol', 'neutral' and the 'alcohol versus neutral' difference contrast. We also investigated how test-retest reliability of the different contrasts affected the capacity to establishing associations with clinical data and determining effect size estimates. Whereas brain activation, indexed by the constituting contrast conditions 'alcohol' and 'neutral' separately, displayed overall moderate (ICC > 0.4) to good (ICC > 0.75) test-retest reliability in areas of the mesocorticolimbic system, the difference contrast 'alcohol versus neutral' showed poor overall reliability (ICC < 0.40), which was related to the intercorrelation between the constituting conditions. Data simulations and analyses of craving data confirmed that the low reliability of the difference contrast substantially limited the capacity to establish associations with clinical data and precisely estimate effect sizes. Future research on alcohol cue-reactivity should be cautioned by the low reliability of the common 'alcohol versus neutral' difference contrast. We propose that this limitation can be overcome by using the constituent task conditions as an individual difference measure, when intending to longitudinally monitor brain responses.

Keywords: Dice; Jaccard; alcohol cue-reactivity; fMRI; intraclass correlation; reliability.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Insel T, Cuthbert B, Garvey M, et al. Research domain criteria (RDoC): toward a new classification framework for research on mental disorders. Am Psychiatric Assoc. 2010;167(7):748-751.
    1. Voon V, Grodin E, Mandali A, et al. Addictions NeuroImaging Assessment (ANIA): towards an integrative framework for alcohol use disorder. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2020;113:492-506.
    1. Bach P, Weil G, Pompili E, et al. Incubation of neural alcohol cue reactivity after withdrawal and its blockade by naltrexone. Addict Biol. 2020;25(1):e12717. https://doi.org/10.1111/adb.12717
    1. Mann K, Vollstädt-Klein S, Reinhard I, et al. Predicting naltrexone response in alcohol-dependent patients: the contribution of functional magnetic resonance imaging. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2014;38(11):2754-2762.
    1. Schacht JP, Randall PK, Latham PK, et al. Predictors of naltrexone response in a randomized trial: reward-related brain activation, OPRM1 genotype, and smoking status. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2017;42(13):2640-2653.

Publication types