Possibilities of Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Assessment of the Functional State of the Brain in Patients with Opioid Addiction

Author(s): Tarumov D, Trufanov A, Chakchir O, Abdulaev SH, Partsernyak A, Efimtsev A, Bystrova D, Kurasov E, Shamrey V, Zhelezniak I

Background and Purpose: The opioid addiction is among the most often found types of addictive pathology conceding on prevalence only to an alcohol addiction. To estimate the functional state of the brain in patients with opioid dependence syndrome using fMRI.

Materials and Methods: 82 men were examined, 64 of them aged 30.9+2.6 years having opioid dependence syndrome (F11.2). The control group (CG) included 18 healthy. Functional MRI was performed on Siemens Espree 1.5T MRI system using the BOLD technique. Based on the MATLAB (Neural Network Toolbox) software, the CONN Functional Connectivity Toolbox 17 was started, which preprocessed the received data separately for each study. Next was the stage of noise reduction and two-level processing, a correlation was estimated based on the "interested" areas (ROI-to-ROI).

Results: In all patients suffering from opioid addiction, at resting-state fMRI, "oppression" of functional connections is noted in comparison with the normals. These changes are noted both in the default mode networks, and in the cortical and subcortical structures, which indicate: a violation of control functions, making the right decision, thinking, cognitive and emotional components in narcotic drug addicts.

Conclusions: The obtained data on functional changes in brain structures in patients suffering from opioid addiction will help to clarify the pathogenetic mechanisms of this pathology, with the possibility of subsequent development of basic objective diagnostic criteria of the opioid dependence syndrome, excluding the subjectivity of a narcologist at the stage of drawing up an expert opinion.