The current project aims to investigate neurobiological markers of sensation seeking personality trait, combining well-established behavioral paradigms and brain imaging techniques. We predict that compared to low sensation seekers, individuals with high sensation seeking trait are more proned to be oversensitive to positive rewards and have an overactive reward circuitry. This characteristic may be a risk factor for their initial experimentaion with drugs and later addiction. In contrary, high sensation seekers are also less responsive to negative consequences and show weaker cognitive control to irreleveant cues, which may be another risk factor, lack of impulse control, that leads to substance abuse. We plan to explore neural mechanisms of these two aspects of sensation seeking, reward seeking and lack of control, in order to elucidate neurobiological markers of sensation seeking and understand its susceptibility to substance abuse. Ultimately we hope we can provide behavioral and neurobiological evidences in diagnosis, prevention and intervention of substance abuse in high risk populations.
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