# Neurocognitive Abnormalities in Stimulant Abuse among High-Risk Women

> **NIH NIH R01** · LOVELACE BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE · 2022 · $800,808

## Abstract

Project Abstract 
There continues to be great interest and public/health/relevance with regard to understanding the neurobiological 
systems that underlie the comorbidity of substance use disorders and other psychiatric conditions. In a previous 
R01 award, we focused our efforts upon characterizing the neural circuitry underlying moral decision making in 
incarcerated men with varying levels of two frequently co-occurring conditions: stimulant abuse and psychopathy. 
Here we propose to extend this work to incarcerated women, examine longitudinal outcomes, and apply stateof-the-art network analyses for predictive models. Studies published by our research team have demonstrated 
sex differences in the degree and expression of psychopathic traits, patterns of stimulant abuse, and moral 
decision-making. However, the neural circuitry that underlies these sex differences is not well understood. We 
have also identified substantial sex differences in regional gray matter volume and density in our extant samples. 
Collectively, sex differences in pathophysiology could have significant implications for treatment strategies and 
differential biomarkers of treatment prediction and outcome in men and women. We will implement the research 
strategy with a large incarcerated population by deploying a unique mobile MRI scanner to the regional women’s 
prison. Participants will be stratified by their level of lifetime stimulant (cocaine, amphetamine) use severity and 
psychopathic traits (high, medium, low) and will undergo anatomical and functional MRI scanning while 
completing multi-modal (i.e., linguistic and picture) decision-making tasks. We will also examine functional 
network and dynamic network connectivity in women using a new multiband EPI pulse sequence, and collect 
longitudinal outcomes after release to the community and test behavioral and neuropredictive models of relapse 
and future antisocial behavior. This work is expected to generate a large, robust dataset that characterizes the 
overlapping and unique aspects of neural circuitry underlying stimulant use and psychopathy in females. The 
proposed research is in line with recent priorities emphasized by NIDA for projects aimed at examining gender 
differences, and effects specific to females, to improve our understanding of the nature and etiology of drug 
abuse.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10522796
- **Project number:** 1R01DA055158-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** LOVELACE BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE
- **Principal Investigator:** KENT A KIEHL
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $800,808
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-08-01 → 2027-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10522796

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10522796, Neurocognitive Abnormalities in Stimulant Abuse among High-Risk Women (1R01DA055158-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10522796. Licensed CC0.

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