Mapping Reward Circuits: Orbitofrontal-Accumben Tracts and Their Links to Psychopathological Traits

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre 

Dysfunction in reward-related brain circuits, particularly involving the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and its projections to the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), have been implicated in various psychopathologies, including depression, anxiety, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) ( Kujawa, 2019). The OFC is structurally, and functionally divided into the medial OFC (mOFC) and lateral OFC (lOFC), with the mOFC primarily involved in processing rewards and the lOFC associated with non-reward or punishment sensitivity (Rolls, 2019). These divisions influence goal-directed behavior and emotional regulation through their White Matter (WM) connectivity with the NAcc (Haber, 2012). Despite extensive functional imaging evidence, the structural underpinnings of these pathways remains unexplored. This study investigates the structural associations of lOFC-NAcc and mOFC-NAcc tracts to psychopathological scores, using diffusion MRI data from healthy subjects from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) (Van Essen, 2013).