Quitting smoking is challenging in part because environmental smoking cues can trigger the desire to smoke. Neurobiological responses to smoking cues are often observed in reward-related brain regions such as the caudate and nucleus accumbens (NAc). While reward plays a well-established role in the formation of cue reactivity, whether general reward responsiveness contributes to individual differences in cue-reactivity among chronic smokers is unclear; establishing such link could provide insight into the mechanisms maintaining cue reactivity. The current study explored this relationship by assessing smoking cue reactivity during functional magnetic imaging followed by an out-of-scanner probabilistic reward task (PRT) in 24 nicotine-dependent smokers (14 women). In addition, owing to sex differences in cue reactivity and reward function, this same relationship was examined as a function of sex. Following recent smoking, greater reward responsiveness on the PRT was associated with enhanced left caudate reactivity to smoking cues. No relationship was found in any other striatal subregion. The positive relationship between reward responsiveness and caudate smoking cue reactivity was significant only in male smokers, fitting with the idea that males and females respond to the reinforcing elements of smoking cues differently. These findings are clinically relevant as they show that, following recent smoking, nicotine-dependent individuals who are more cue reactive are also more likely to be responsive to non-drug rewards, which may be useful for making individualized treatment decisions that involve behavioral reward contingencies.

戒烟具有挑战性，部分原因是环境吸烟提示会触发吸烟的欲望。通常在奖励相关的大脑区域（如尾状和伏伏核（NAc））中观察到对吸烟线索的神经生物学反应。尽管奖励在提示反应性的形成中起着公认的作用，但一般性的奖励反应性是否会导致慢性之间提示反应性的个体差异吸烟者不清楚；建立这样的链接可以提供有关保持提示反应性的机制的见解。本研究通过评估24名尼古丁依赖吸烟者（14名女性）在功能性磁成像过程中的吸烟提示反应性，然后进行了扫描仪外概率奖励任务（PRT），从而探索了这种关系。此外，由于提示反应性和奖励功能的性别差异，这种相同的关系被视为性别的函数。在最近吸烟之后，PRT上更大的奖赏反应性与左尾尾对吸烟线索的反应性增强有关。在其他纹状体次区域中未发现任何关系。奖励反应与尾状提示反应性之间的正相关仅在男性吸烟者中显着，男性和女性对吸烟暗示的增强元素的反应方式不同。这些发现具有临床意义，因为它们表明，最近吸烟后，提示烟碱依赖性更高的个体具有反应性也更可能对非药物奖励做出反应，这可能有助于做出涉及行为奖励突发事件的个性化治疗决策。