U. professor receives national award for research on addiction, economic habits

Earlier this month, Anna Konova, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, received the Neuropsychopharmacology Editor's Early Career Award (NEECA) for her research on the impact of cravings on addiction. 

The ​​​​American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) bestowed the award to Konova for her research published in the Neuropsychopharmacology journal in 2022.

Konova, the director of the University's Addiction & Decision Neuroscience Lab, said her work examined the economic decision-making habits of individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD).

Konova and her fellow researchers observed the spending habits of 35 adults diagnosed with OUD who are registered for an outpatient rehabilitation program. Their study found that participants experiencing greater opioid cravings placed higher monetary value on items they perceived to be more closely related to opioid use.

Konova said her research utilized imaging, computers and testing to analyze addiction cycles and looked at how the brain processes a cycle of stopping and starting the use of an addictive substance.

"This cycle is characterized by repeated periods of abstinence and subsequent transition to reuse and relapse that span a significant portion of an individual's life," she said. "We aim to clarify how these transitions and the vulnerable states that accompany them are reflected in decision circuits in the brain when they are reflected, and why, with the strong belief that this information can be leveraged to confer resilience and improve health outcomes."

Konova was nominated for the NEECA award by Yavin Shaham, a researcher and neuroscientist at the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

Shaham said in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, that there had previously been a lack of a research model on opioid use and relapsing and praised Konova and her team's work on this issue.

"Dr. Konova and her colleagues introduced a novel method rooted in decision neuroscience to address this gap," Shaham said in the post. "This shift in subjective valuation, driven by craving, provides new insights into how craving shapes decision-making systems and influences addiction-related behaviors in real-life situations. The study of Dr. Konova and her colleagues also broadly contributes to the emerging field of computational psychiatry and the understanding of human subjective states."

In a video acceptance of the award, Konova said she was honored to be chosen for the award and that the research on this study was a new and risky approach to improve the understanding of the cravings and decision-making processes of those who have a substance use disorder. 

She also spoke about the support and guidance from the ACNP and Shaham in her and her team's work.

"I was really moved to have a scientific hero like Yavin Shaham nominate our work for this award," she said. "(It) is something really indescribable. His support for our research and belief in the potential impact it can have is a source of immense motivation."

Konova told The Daily Targum that the goal of the research is to assist those struggling with addiction by improving the medical community's understanding of what they are going through.

"The award is a wonderful recognition and a great boon to our research," Konova said. "It gives us reassurance that we are pursuing important questions in our research and hope to significantly contribute to improving the lives of people with addiction in better understanding the mechanisms of their symptoms and experiences in recovery."