Brain Scans May Predict Drug Relapses Per Stanford Study

PALO ALTO, CA -- Predicting who will remain drug-free and who will relapse following treatment for drug addiction has been impossible – until now. Stanford psychologists think they’ve found a possible clue. For stimulants like cocaine and amphetamines, activity in the brain’s reward-processing circuits could be key to knowing who's susceptible, Stanford News Service reported this week.

The study, published Dec. 28 in JAMA Network Open, found that brain scan data could correctly predict who is about three-quarters of the time. That's a significant improvement over past efforts. The project was part of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute’s NeuroChoice Initiative, which seeks to understand the causes of and treatments for addiction.

Kelly MacNiven, a postdoctoral fellow and lead author on the paper, stressed that the results are preliminary and albeit representative of a small sampling. She and her colleagues only looked at 36 people, and they were all veterans and mostly men. But if the results hold up in other groups, it could help doctors figure out who is likely to relapse and might need more help in drug treatment.

“Even if this doesn’t lead to treatments, we think it could be useful just as a way of determining who’s at most risk,” said Brian Knutson, a professor of psychology in the School of Humanities and Sciences and the paper’s senior author.

MacNiven, Knutson and colleagues are not the first to try to predict who might relapse, nor are they the first to look to brain scans for an answer. In the past, doctors have tried to use clinical observations and demographic data to correlate cravings with action, but with little success.

But for now, MacNiven said, the most encouraging thing is that doctors may have a new way to figure out who is most at risk for relapse.

“There’s really no way of knowing whether someone is going to benefit from treatment or whether they’ll relapse,” MacNiven said. “If we have a signal that is predictive of relapse, that is in and of itself important.”

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