To date, rsFC has been applied in only a handful of drug addiction-related studies and the current review begins with an overview of those findings. As expected in an emerging field, many of these studies have been somewhat exploratory in nature, which have led to conflicting findings. Applications of this tool in addiction research may therefore benefit from experimental approaches grounded by stronger a priori theoretical models. To this end, throughout the review we relate extant addiction-related rsFC findings to a larger corpus of neuroimaging research from healthy controls and other neuropsychiatric conditions. In the latter half of the review we continue this theme and in greater detail link recent findings from network connectivity and nicotine-related neuroimaging studies to develop a heuristic framework yielding empirically testable hypotheses regarding the effects of both nicotine abstinence and drug administration on brain and behavior.
