Assessing the Impact of Varenicline on Brain-Behavior Vulnerability

Our proposal will enable us to study cocaine patients to determine whether varenicline can
weaken brain arousal to drug cues in an fMRI imaging setting, which is what we theorize.
This supplement supports a pilot imaging study in cocaine dependence. It will evaluate the
impact of varenicline on the brain response to ultra-brief drug and comparison cues in an
event-related fMRI paradigm. This is a pilot study.

We will additionally examine the impact of varenicline on addiction-relevant behavioral
probes of impulsivity, inhibition, attentional and affective bias. The proposed study will
provide the first brain-behavioral probes of varenicline's cocaine-relevant actions in
humans, and will provide the critical scientific rationale to move the agent into future
collaborative clinical trials.