Imagining future events changes brain to improve healthy decision-making, new study indicates
Virginia Tech scientists at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC found practicing episodic future thinking both reduced impulsivity and enhanced connectivity in key regions of the brain
image:
The late Warren Bickel (left) and Stephen LaConte, both professors at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, led a study that suggests envisioning future events could be an effective behavioral therapy for alcohol use disorder. The study also documented changes in brain connectivity associated with the practice.
view moreCredit: Virginia Tech
Learning to think more about specific events in the future appears to reduce impulsivity, improve decision-making, and shows potential as a therapy for alcohol use disorder, a new Virginia Tech study found.
The study, which involved 24 participants whose brains were scanned during both resting-state and task-based fMRI, showed brain connections were altered by future thinking.
The research, published recently in the journal Brain Connectivity, was among the last led by the late Warren Bickel, professor and director of the Addiction Recovery Research Center at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.
Bickel, who died of cancer in September, was a leading researcher in the field of using “episodic future thinking” – the capacity to vividly imagine events that might happen in your future – to address addiction.
“What we were trying to understand was how episodic future thinking works as a kind of therapeutic approach,” said Stephen LaConte, professor and corresponding author on the paper. “What we found is that training people to think more about their future changed the extent to which they value immediate rewards over those in the future, and we’re seeing related changes in connectivity in key regions of the brain along with that.”
The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute study is the first in which participants practiced imagining specific, personal future events in the lab before returning to those thoughts during an MRI brain scan to identify brain activity changes.
For example, a subject might think, “In one year, I will be opening my first art gallery in Los Angeles,” along with details of the sights, sounds, and feelings of the gallery opening.
Alcohol use disorder is characterized in part by an impaired ability to think clearly about the future and a tendency toward impulsive decision making. The phenomenon is called delay discounting, or valuing delayed rewards less than immediate ones.
Previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of episodic future thinking in reducing delay discounting and promoting making healthier choices, and it’s emerging as a potential behavioral intervention for substance use disorders.
Participants exhibited reduced impulsivity in their decision-making, and greater ease at more challenging tasks in deciding between immediate and delayed rewards. At the same time, the scientists noticed increased connection between multiple regions of the brain called the salience network.
“We found that in the delayed discounting tasks, people who had this higher functional connectivity actually were able to perform the hard tasks more quickly,” said LaConte, who is also interim co-director of the Addiction Recovery Research Center. “What that means is that either the episodic future thinking is making the tasks easier, or it’s freeing up some brain resources and temporarily changing their delay discounting. We don’t yet know which.”
The study provides a baseline for future research, said Jeremy Myslowski, the paper’s first author.
“We see this as a fruitful opportunity to examine potential changes in brain connectivity by collecting data both before and after the intervention,” said Myslowski, a doctoral candidate in LaConte’s lab when he worked on the study. He has since graduated. “And when we move into performing work with a real-world alcohol consumption component, we have something tangible in the brain data to point to.”
Further research is needed to determine how long-lasting the behavioral and connectivity changes are.
LaConte noted that the results closely mirrored a 2020 study of brain connectivity in people receiving antidepressants for the first time, which bolstered the idea that episodic future thinking could be a valuable early intervention therapy, and the brain connectivity the study documented could be a useful marker for success in evaluating therapies for psychiatric diseases.
LaConte and Bickel were longtime collaborators at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. Bickel was among the first to recognize the importance of episodic future thinking in understanding and treating substance use disorders.
Journal
Brain Connectivity
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Connectivity Changes Following Episodic Future Thinking in Alcohol Use Disorder
Long-term cocaine use may increase impulsivity
While being more impulsive does not necessarily escalate cocaine use, long-term cocaine use may increase impulsivity in otherwise healthy rats.
Society for Neuroscience
image:
This schematic depicts the delay-discounting task used to measure impulsivity level. Rats chose either a small reward delivered with no delay or a large reward available with a delay of up to 60 seconds.
view moreCredit: Shen et al., eNeuro 2025
Researchers have widely accepted that impulsivity increases the risk of drug addiction, but the evidence to support this belief is mixed. Exploring the relationship between impulsivity and cocaine use in rats, Yihong Yang and colleagues from the National Institute on Drug Abuse found evidence that contradicts the prevailing view that high impulsivity predicts cocaine use.
One classification of impulsivity is impulsive choice, which can be studied with risky choice tasks and delay-discounting tasks (DDT). During DDT, impulsive individuals prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones. In this eNeuro study, the researchers used DDT to categorize how impulsive rats were compared to their peers. After being classified by impulsivity level, the rats went through a cocaine self-administration paradigm; researchers can measure addiction-like behavior by continued cocaine use despite the known presence of unpleasant consequences—foot shocks, in this case. In addition to finding that impulsivity levels did not influence cocaine use, the researchers were surprised to discover that long-term cocaine use increased impulsivity in rats previously considered less impulsive than their peers. Brain imaging and other assessments revealed that rats with cocaine-driven impulsivity had fewer dopamine receptors and weaker communication between brain regions in a reward-related network. According to the authors, these findings advance our understanding of complex drug–brain circuit interactions and how they influence behavior.
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About eNeuro
eNeuro is an online, open-access journal published by the Society for Neuroscience. Established in 2014, eNeuro publishes a wide variety of content, including research articles, short reports, reviews, commentaries and opinions.
About The Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 35,000 members in more than 95 countries.
Journal
eNeuro
Article Title
Cocaine Self-Administration Increases Impulsive Decision-Making in Low-Impulsive Rats Associated with Impaired Functional Connectivity in the Mesocorticolimbic System
Article Publication Date
3-Mar-2025
Novel research shows brain connections can predict future substance use in adolescents
Insights from a new study published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging can play an important role in early prevention and intervention
Elsevier
image:
A. Seed region: dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). B. Whole-brain regression analysis reveals an association between higher dACC-dlPFC connectivity at Time 1 and a delayed age of first substance use. C. Orange data points show the trajectory of dACC-dlPFC connectivity before substance use onset, with a decline observed one year prior. Gray data points represent dACC-dlPFC connectivity at and after substance use onset. Error bars indicate the standard error.
view moreCredit: Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Chen et al.
Philadelphia, March 3, 2025 – Adolescent substance use is a significant predictor of future addiction and related disorders. Understanding neural mechanisms underlying substance use initiation and frequency during adolescence is critical for early prevention and intervention. A novel study in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, published by Elsevier, shows that by tracking year-to-year changes in brain connectivity underlying cognitive control, the ability to flexibly use goals to guide behavior and overcome habitual responses, data can predict when an adolescent is at high risk of starting to use substances, an important message for early prevention.
Lead investigator Jungmeen Kim-Spoon, PhD, Department of Psychology and School of Neuroscience, Virginia Tech, says, "Beginning to use substances at a young age can significantly increase the risk of developing serious substance use problems later in life. This may lead to major challenges in relationships, work, and overall well-being. By identifying the risk of early substance use, we can improve our chances of preventing it and helping individuals avoid these challenges.”
To clarify brain mechanisms that prospectively predict initiation and progression of substance use, the current study examined the trajectories of functional connectivity during cognitive control linked to substance use. For seven years researchers followed 91 adolescents from ages 14 to 21 who had never used substances at the start of this longitudinal study to identify potential neural precursors that predict substance use initiation and frequency. Cognitive control processes were examined using the Multi-Source Interference Task (MSIT) to assess functional neural connectivity; a questionnaire assessed substance use frequency.
Findings indicate that brain connectivity related to cognitive control predicted substance use initiation, whereas cognitive control behavior did not.
Co-investigator Tae-Ho Lee, PhD, Department of Psychology and School of Neuroscience, Virginia Tech, explains, "Our study revealed that neural recruitment from the salience network (brain regions for detecting and responding to stimuli) during the cognitive control process, specifically the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (aINS), can predict future substance use in adolescents before they actually begin using substances."
Co-investigator Ya-Yun Chen, MS, Department of Psychology, Virginia Tech, adds, "Specifically, stronger connectivity between the dACC and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was associated with delayed substance use onset, and this connectivity pattern showed a significant drop one year prior to substance use initiation. In contrast, lower connectivity of the dACC with the supplementary motor area, along with heightened connectivity of the aINS with the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex and angular gyrus, predicted greater severity of future substance use."
Editor-in-Chief of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging Cameron S. Carter, MD, University of California Irvine, comments, "Adolescence is an important period characterized by heightened susceptibility to risk-taking behaviors, which have implications for substance use. National data indicate that approximately 68% of individuals aged 12 to 17 in the United States reported initiating the use of substances such as cigarettes, alcohol, or marijuana in the past year. In light of these statistics, identifying neurodevelopmental precursors linked to the risk of early substance use and heavy use during adolescence becomes crucial. The current study paves the way for innovative early prevention and intervention strategies."
Dr. Kim-Spoon concludes, "Our study highlights the critical role of cognitive control-related neural connectivity in forecasting substance use initiation and frequency during adolescence. The results imply that efforts to strengthen and monitor the development of the top-down cognitive control system in the brain from early adolescence may serve as a protective factor, helping to deter progression into problematic substance use. Furthermore, for adolescents with heightened frequency of substance use, interventions may be more effective if they target interoceptive processes as part of cognitive control training."
Journal
Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Method of Research
Imaging analysis
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Neural Signatures of Cognitive Control Predict Future Adolescent Substance Use Onset and Frequency
COI Statement
The authors’ affiliations and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interest are available in the article. Cameron S. Carter, MD, is Chair of the Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. His disclosures of financial and conflicts of interest are available https://www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org/bpsc-editorial-disclosures.
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