In sum, rsFC studies are beginning to shed light on circuit-level alterations associated with drug addiction. While initial findings are limited and have not been totally consistent, potentially due to between-study methodological and participant-characteristic issues, supplementing traditional task-based neuroimaging data with rsFC analyses may provide a deeper level of understanding regarding psychological deficits associated with reward, emotional and cognitive processing often related to an extended drug use history. By relating extant addiction-related rsFC findings with a larger body of literature related to emotional regulation and cognitive control, we have attempted to provide a heuristic framework allowing for a transition from these early exploratory studies to more model-driven hypothesis testing. The section below extends this theme and provides in greater detail an exemplar model-based framework derived from existing connectivity and task-based activation studies, relating system-level neural circuit interactions with the cognitive deficits often observed during smoking abstinence and the performance-enhancing effects of nicotine administration.
