Adolescents with a particular variant of an opioid receptor gene have less response in a part of prefrontal cortex that evaluates rewards, compared to those with the other version of the gene, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC).
For the study, presented Monday at Neuroscience 2018, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (abstract #7517), the investigators scanned adolescents who have never used drugs or alcohol with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they played a simplified "gambling" game. In some participants, researchers found a muted reward response when the participants were shown when they won, versus lost, a small amount of money.
These results suggest that adolescents with a particular variant of an opioid receptor may be more vulnerable to substance abuse in later years, says the study's senior investigator, John VanMeter, Ph.D., director of the Center for Functional and Molecular Imaging at GUMC, and an associate professor of neurology.
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