Summary: A recent study concludes that teaching people to think about certain future events you lower aggression and speed up decision-making. Researchers used ultrasound scans to demonstrate that practicing acute future thinking improved connectivity in important brain regions, making participants less likely to select instant rewards over long-term benefits.
The method, which was originally associated with making healthier selections, may prove to be a convincing behavioral treatment for alcohol use disorder. Future studies may look into whether these mental changes last and whether they can improve the results of addiction treatment.
Important Information
- Aggressive decision-making and Future Thinking: Training in sequential future thinking reduced spontaneous future thinking.
- Increased communication in the salience system, according to neuroimaging scans, is a sign of improved decision-making.
- Coming Thinking: Findings suggest that it could be used as a probable addiction therapy for substance use disorders.
Origin: Virginia Tech
A fresh Virginia Tech study found that having more time to think about certain events in the future appears to lower impulsivity, enhance decision-making, and suggests possible as a treatment for alcohol use disorder.  ,
The study, which involved 24 people whose brains were scanned both during resting-state and task-based brain, revealed that potential considering altered brain connections.
The study, which was just published in the journal Brain Connectivity, was led by the late Warren Bickel, professor and director of the Addiction Recovery Research Center at VTC’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute.
Bickel, who passed away in September from cancer, was a pioneer in the field of using “episodic potential thinking,” or “episodic coming thinking,” to address addiction.
The paper’s publisher, teacher and related author Stephen LaConte, said,” What we were trying to understand was how episodic future considering functions as a kind of healing approach.
We observed changes in connection in important areas of the brain along with that, and we learned that by encouraging people to think more about their future, it was changed the way that they valued immediate benefits over those in the future.
The second study conducted by the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute involved a group of lab-based researchers who practiced imagining precise, specific future events before returning to those ideas during an MRI mind check to assess mind activity changes.  ,
For instance, a theme might include information about the sights, sounds, and emotions of the starting gallery’s “in a year,” along with the statement” I will be opening my first art museum in Los Angeles.”
Alcohol use disorder is characterized in part by a diminished capacity to think critically about the future and a propensity toward spontaneous decision-making. Delay lowering, or valuing delayed benefits less than fast ones, is a phenomenon.
Previous studies have demonstrated that acute future thinking can help to lessen delay-discounting and promote healthier choices, and it is now being used as a potential behavioral treatment for substance use disorders.  ,
Participants showed less hyperactivity in their decision-making and greater ease when choosing between fast and delayed rewards, which were more difficult to predict. The researchers also observed a more extensive link between the intensity system, which is a number of brain regions, at the same time.
People with higher efficient communication were able to complete the difficult tasks more quickly, according to LaConte, who serves as interim co-director of the Addiction Recovery Research Center.
That implies that acute potential thinking is facilitating the tasks, or that it has some brain resources free up and has temporarily altered their delay discounting. Which is it that we don’t hear already?
The first author of the paper, Jeremy Myslowski, said the research serves as a reference point for future studies.
When Myslowski, a doctoral candidate in LaConte’s laboratory, worked on the review, he said,” We see this as a useful opportunity to examine possible changes in brain communication by collecting data both before and after the intervention.” He has since received his diploma. And when we transition into performing work with a portion of alcohol consumption in the real world, we have anything tangible in the head data to point to.
To decide how long-lasting social and communication changes are, more research is required.  ,
The study’s findings supported the idea that acute potential thinking could be a useful first intervention therapy, and that the brain connectivity the study documented could be a valuable indicator for success in evaluating therapies for psychiatric diseases. They carefully mirrored the 2020 study’s findings of brain connectivity in people receiving antidepressants for the first time.  ,
LaConte and Bickel worked for the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute for a long time. In addition to understanding and treating substance use disorders, Bickel was one of the first to recognize the value of acute future thinking.  ,
About this information about science study
Author: Leigh Anne Kelley
Source: Virginia Tech
Contact: Leigh Anne Kelley – Virginia Tech
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Start access to original analysis
Warren Bickel, et seq.,” In alcohol use disorder, the acute potential thinking leads to a change in connectivity..” Mental Connectivity
Abstract
In alcohol use disorder, the acute potential thinking leads to a change in connectivity.
Introduction: Recent studies on obesity and addictions point to episodic future thinking ( EFT ) as a promising intervention for healthy decision-making.
We used data from a pilot study to examine the acute neural effects of EFT on alcohol use disorder ( AUD). We also used data from a previously published functional MRI ( fMRI ) study, in which participants had not received any intervention for their AUD, because of the limitations of those data.
Then, they performed fMRI using both task-based ( delay discounting]DD] ) and resting-state. We performed seed-based assessments of the resting-state information using nodes from the default mode network, intensity networks, as well as the brain. The benefits then served as a guide for the DD task’s psychosomatic conversation analyses.
To reproduce and aid in interpreting our key findings, we also used data from a larger, previously reported study as a” no intervention” group of AUD participants ( nbsp, = 50, median age: 43.3; median Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition ( DSM-IV ) alcohol dependence score: 7 ).
Results: Participants showed mathematically higher DD rates, a cognitive indicator of addiction, despite EFT and not CET. In-state analysis of the remaining brain revealed connection differences between the lateral poles. This difference’s polarity suggested that EFT may lessen the likelihood of these areas in AUD having a hypo-connectivity marriage.
We also discovered resting-state communication differences between the right dorsolateral prefrontal lobe ( R DLPFC), which later led to the identification of R-to-L DLPFC psychosomatic conversation differences during DD.
Additionally, the resting-state salience-to-DLPFC efficient communication showed an inverse relationship to DD level, while hyperconnectivity between left and right DLPFC reflected slower reaction times during DD trials.
Discussion: These findings suggest that changes in neural connectivity patterns in AUD may be related to previously observed benefits of EFT, such as the improved DD replicated here.
The modifications to connectivity highlight possible mechanisms that could contribute to EFT’s ability to improve AUD decision-making. Understanding these neural effects may help to develop more precise therapies for AUD and related disorders.
