ABSTRACT
Objective: To investigate the effects of protracted abstinence (PA) and methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) on the brain function of heroin addicts for 6 months. Methods: Twenty-two heroin addicts with PA for 6 months intervention (PA group), 25 heroin addicts with MMT for 6 months intervention (MMT group), and 35 normal controls (control group) were recruited. The resting data were collected by fMRI. The low-frequency amplitude (ALFF) method was used to calculate the intensity of local brain spontaneous activity in the 3 groups. The differences in ALFF of the 3 groups were analyzed and compared. Results: There were significant differences in ALFF between the 3 groups in the right frontal medial, left medial frontal gyrus, left island leaf, left tongue lingual, right lingual gyrus and right auxiliary motion zone (all P0.05). Conclusion: After 6 months of intervention, there are still abnormalities in some brain regions between PA and MMT, but PA may be more conducive to brain function recovery in heroin addicts.
ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the effects of different abstinent duration on brain functional network of heroin addicts at resting state.Methods Sixteen heroin addicts during protracted abstinence for 11-13 months (PA12 group) and twenty heroin addicts during protracted abstinence for 5-7 months (PA6 group) were recruited in the resting-state functional MRI study.Graph theoretical methods were applied to construct topological organization of whole brain network and nodes betweenness of the networks in all subjects,and the between-group differences were analyzed.The correlation of the node betweenness with the abstinence duration was conducted.Results There was no significant difference (P＞0.05) in the small world characteristic (γ≈1,λ》1) between two groups.Compared with the PA6 group,the PA12 group demonstrated significantly decreased nodal betweenness in regions of left parahippocampal gyrus,left precentral gyrus,and significantly enhanced nodal betweenness in regions of the left cuneus,left temporal and right middle occipital gyrus (all P＜0.05).Moreover,the betweenness of the left precentral gyrus (r =-0.52,P =0.001) and parahippocampal gyrus (r=-0.49,P=0.002) were negatively related with the abstinence duration,the betweenness of the right middle occipital was positively correlated with the abstinence duration (r=0.49,P=0.003).Conclusion The brain network small world topology of heroin addicts tend to be stable after 5-7 months of abstinence.Long-term abstinence may minimize the addicfs memory of drugs and potential drug seeking behavior,and recover addicts' visual spatial attention function.