Results of PPI analyses in this sample showed patterns of activation that were consistent with the known neuroanatomical pathways connecting these brain regions such that dorsal striatum (caudate) revealed greater connectivity with the prefrontal cortex and inferior temporal gyrus whereas the ventral striatum showed greater connectivity with the insula and putamen (Leh et al., 2007) (all in the negative direction). Testing the OPRM1 gene as a moderator of functional connectivity with the right ventral striatum as the seed revealed stronger negative correlations with the insula, putamen, frontomedial cortex, thalamus, and paracingulate gyrus among G-allele carriers.
