{"doi":"10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1102368","title":"Resting state connectivity in people living with HIV before and after stopping heavy drinking","abstract":"Background: Heavy alcohol use in people living with HIV (PLWH) has widespread negative effects on neural functioning. It remains unclear whether experimentally-induced reduction in alcohol use could reverse these effects. We sought to determine the effects of 30-days drinking cessation/reduction on resting state functional connectivity in people with and without HIV. Methods: Thirty-five participants (48.6% PLWH) demonstrating heavy alcohol use attempted to stop drinking for 30 days via contingency management (CM). MRI was acquired at baseline and after thirty days, and functional connectivity across five resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI) networks was calculated with the Conn toolbox for Matlab and examined in relation to transdermal alcohol concentration (TAC) recorded by the ankle-worn secure continuous remote alcohol monitor (SCRAM) and self-reported alcohol use (timeline follow-back; TLFB). Associations between alcohol use and reduction, HIV status, functional connectivity, and change in functional connectivity across five major rsfMRI networks were determined relative to the pre- and post-CM timepoints. Results: Baseline resting-state functional connectivity was not significantly associated with average TAC-AUC during the pre-CM period, though higher self-reported alcohol use over the preceding 30 days was significantly associated with higher baseline connectivity within the Dorsal Attention Network (DAN; p-FDR < 0.05). Baseline connectivity within the Salience network was significantly negatively related to objective drinking reduction after intervention (DAN; p-FDR < 0.05), whereas baseline connectivity within the Limbic network was positively associated with self-reported drinking reduction (p-FDR < 0.05). Change in between-networks functional connectivity after intervention was significantly positively associated with biosensor-confirmed drinking reduction such that higher reduction was associated with stronger connectivity between the limbic and fronto-parietal control networks (p-FDR < 0.05). PLWH with lower DAN connectivity at baseline demonstrated poorer alcohol reduction than those with higher DAN connectivity at baseline. Discussion: Lower resting-state functional connectivity of the Salience network significantly predicted stronger drinking reduction across all participants, suggesting a potential biomarker for reduced susceptibility to the environmental and social cues that often make alcohol use reduction attempts unsuccessful. Increased between-networks connectivity was observed in participants with higher alcohol reduction after CM, suggesting a positive benefit to brain connectivity associated with reduced drinking. PLWH with lower baseline DAN connectivity may not benefit as greatly from CM for alcohol reduction.","journal":"Frontiers in Psychiatry","year":2023,"id":386211,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.863,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1154485,"name":"Jason DeFelice","orcid":"0000-0002-2464-0817","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":948965,"name":"Veronica L. Richards","orcid":"0000-0002-1391-0607","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277889,"name":"Eric C. Porges","orcid":"0000-0003-3885-5859","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":109360,"name":"Ronald A. Cohen","orcid":"0000-0002-8863-8847","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1139789,"name":"Varan Govind","orcid":"0000-0002-1205-5194","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1139788,"name":"Teddy Salan","orcid":"0000-0001-5591-123X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":658651,"name":"Yan Wang","orcid":"0000-0001-7265-778X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1154486,"name":"Zhi Zhou","orcid":"0000-0002-4042-1104","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":339753,"name":"Robert L. Cook","orcid":"0000-0002-7770-3754","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336598,"name":"Joseph M. Gullett","orcid":"0000-0002-8184-7187","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":88,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:17:56.803401Z","pmid":"37265553","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}