Reduced Control Over Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer in Human Addiction: A Systematic Investigation Across Alcohol Use Disorder and Smoking Status
- 1Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Abstract
Pavlovian conditioned stimuli can compromise goal-directed behavior, particularly when they conflict with the required instrumental response. Previous research linked an increased impact of such Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) interference to risky drinking and alcohol dependence. However, it remained unclear whether the observed behavioral and neural alterations generalize to the substantially larger population of non-treatment-seeking individuals with predominantly mild-to-moderate alcohol use disorder (AUD) and to other substances like nicotine. We therefore studied 200 participants from the general population who were stratified by AUD and smoking status before completing a single-lever PIT task during functional imaging. PIT interference was measured as the difference in error rates between incongruent PIT trials, characterized by conflicts of Pavlovian and instrumental stimuli, and congruent trials. Associations with AUD and smoking status, as well as dimensional associations of behavioral PIT interference and neural responses to PIT conflicts with substance-related measures, were examined. As expected, participants with AUD showed greater PIT interference and reduced conflict-related activation in the lateral prefrontal, dorsomedial prefrontal, and anterior cingulate cortex than participants without AUD. The magnitude of these alterations also correlated with higher AUD severity and alcohol consumption, while being independent of smoking status and other smoking-related measures. These findings suggest that enhanced PIT interference generalizes to the broader AUD population but may not extend to other substances like nicotine. They further implicate a reduced recruitment of prefrontal control networks during PIT conflicts as a potential mechanism underlying enhanced PIT interference in AUD and its association with clinically relevant outcome measures.
Related
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- Directed forgetting and working-memory load reduce outcome-selective Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer in humans
- Enhanced Alcohol-Specific but not General Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer in Alcohol Use Disorder
- Instrumental-Motor Transfer: The Relative Value of Competing Movement Goals Modulates Implicit Motor Learning
- Active Escape or Active Change? Decomposing Pavlovian Bias into Non-emotional Components
BibTeX
@misc{thill2026reduced,
title = {{Reduced Control Over Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer in Human Addiction: A Systematic Investigation Across Alcohol Use Disorder and Smoking Status}},
author = {L. Thill and H. Chen and C. Bäuchl and S. Krasniqi and M. Born and M. Marxen and E. Friedel and M. Pilhatsch and A. Heinz and M. N. Smolka},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.25.754324},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.25.754324v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Reduced Control Over Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer in Human Addiction: A Systematic Investigation Across Alcohol Use Disorder and Smoking Status
AU - L. Thill
AU - H. Chen
AU - C. Bäuchl
AU - S. Krasniqi
AU - M. Born
AU - M. Marxen
AU - E. Friedel
AU - M. Pilhatsch
AU - A. Heinz
AU - M. N. Smolka
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/25
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.25.754324
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.25.754324v1
AB - Pavlovian conditioned stimuli can compromise goal-directed behavior, particularly when they conflict with the required instrumental response. Previous research linked an increased impact of such Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) interference to risky drinking and alcohol dependence. However, it remained unclear whether the observed behavioral and neural alterations generalize to the substantially larger population of non-treatment-seeking individuals with predominantly mild-to-moderate alcohol use disorder (AUD) and to other substances like nicotine. We therefore studied 200 participants from the general population who were stratified by AUD and smoking status before completing a single-lever PIT task during functional imaging. PIT interference was measured as the difference in error rates between incongruent PIT trials, characterized by conflicts of Pavlovian and instrumental stimuli, and congruent trials. Associations with AUD and smoking status, as well as dimensional associations of behavioral PIT interference and neural responses to PIT conflicts with substance-related measures, were examined. As expected, participants with AUD showed greater PIT interference and reduced conflict-related activation in the lateral prefrontal, dorsomedial prefrontal, and anterior cingulate cortex than participants without AUD. The magnitude of these alterations also correlated with higher AUD severity and alcohol consumption, while being independent of smoking status and other smoking-related measures. These findings suggest that enhanced PIT interference generalizes to the broader AUD population but may not extend to other substances like nicotine. They further implicate a reduced recruitment of prefrontal control networks during PIT conflicts as a potential mechanism underlying enhanced PIT interference in AUD and its association with clinically relevant outcome measures.
ER -