Background: Disturbances in gain and loss processing have been extensively reported in adults with addiction, a brain disorder characterized by obsession with addictive substances or behaviours. Previous studies have provided conflicting results with respect to neural abnormalities in gain processing in addiction, and few investigations into loss processing.
Methods: We conducted voxel-wise meta-analyses of abnormal task-evoked regional activities in adults with substance dependence and gambling addiction during the processing of gains and losses not related to their addiction (mainly monetary). We identified 24 studies, including 465 participants with substance dependence, 81 with gambling addiction and 490 healthy controls.
Results: Compared with healthy controls, all participants with addictions showed hypoactivations in the prefrontal cortex, striatum and insula and hyperactivations in the default mode network during gain anticipation; hyperactivations in the prefrontal cortex and both hyper- and hypoactivations in the striatum during loss anticipation; and hyperactivations in the occipital lobe during gain outcome. In the substance dependence subgroup, activity in the occipital lobe was increased during gain anticipation but decreased during loss anticipation.
Limitations: We were unable to conduct meta-analyses in the gambling addiction subgroup because of a limited data set. We did not investigate the effects of clinical variables because of limited information.
Conclusion: The current study identified altered brain activity associated with higher- and lower-level function during gain and loss processing for non-addiction (mainly monetary) stimuli in adults with substance dependence and gambling addiction. Adults with addiction were more sensitive to anticipatory gains than losses at higher- and lower-level brain areas. These results may help us to better understand the pathology of gain and loss processing in addiction.
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