latter study, however, found a relationship between NAcc activation and sensation-seeking scores across all subjects. Sensation-seeking is related to high risk taking and impulsive decision making (Zuckerman, 2007) and been linked with heavy alcohol use, early onset of substance use and polysubstance abuse (Malmberg et al., 2010; Zuckerman, 1972). Animal models of sensation seeking, using novel stimuli as probes, find increased NAcc dopamine response similar to drug reinforcers (Olsen and Winder, 2009; Rebec et al., 1997) which suggest that this trait may share neural circuitry with reward processing. We hypothesized that perhaps familial liability may involve functional connectivity differences between reward and control networks, rather than activation differences in specific structures, as seen in substance users.
