Assessing the Impact of Varenicline on Brain-Behavior Vulnerability

Our proposal will enable us to study cocaine patients to determine whether varenicline can weaken brain arousal to drug cues in an fMRI imaging setting, which is what we theorize. This supplement supports a pilot imaging study in cocaine dependence. It will evaluate the impact of varenicline on the brain response to ultra-brief drug and comparison cues in an event-related fMRI paradigm. This is a pilot study. We will additionally examine the impact of varenicline on addiction-relevant behavioral probes of impulsivity, inhibition, attentional and affective bias. The proposed study will provide the first brain-behavioral probes of varenicline\'s cocaine-relevant actions in humans, and will provide the critical scientific rationale to move the agent into future collaborative clinical trials.