Abstract
The striatum and thalamus are subcortical structures intimately involved in addiction, and the morphology and microstructure of these has been studied in murine models of cocaine addiction. However, human studies using non-invasive MRI has shown inconsistencies in morphology using volumetric analysis. In our study, we used MRI-based volumetric and novel shape analysis, as well as a novel fast diffusion kurtosis imaging sequence to study the morphology and microstructure of striatum and thalamus in crack cocaine addiction (CA) compared to matched healthy controls (HC). We did not find significant differences in volume and mean kurtosis (MKT) between groups. However, we found significant contraction of nucleus accumbens in CA compared to HC. We also found significant age related changes in volume and MKT of CA in striatum and thalamus that are contrary to those seen in normal brain aging. Our findings suggest that the use of finer methods and sequences is needed to characterize morphological and microstructural changes in cocaine addiction, and that brain changes in cocaine addiction are related to age.