# Varieties of Impulsivity in Opiate and Stimulant Users

> **NIH NIH R01** · VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $508,338

## Abstract

Project Summary
Impulsivity has gained prominence as one of the cardinal etiological risk factors for the development and
maintenance of addictive disorders. However, both impulsivity and addiction are highly heterogeneous, which
has hampered progress in understanding the link between the two. To address this heterogeneity, we have
developed a program of addiction research in Bulgaria, a major European center for production of synthetic
amphetamine-type stimulants and a key transit country for heroin trafficking, due to its strategic geographical
position on the Balkan Drug Route. Through our 17-yearlong collaboration with Bulgarian colleagues, we have
accessed rare populations of predominantly monosubstance-dependent (‘pure’) heroin and amphetamine users,
many in protracted abstinence. In the parent DA021421 study, we have tested >800 participants with a
comprehensive assessment battery of clinical, personality, and neurocognitive tasks of impulsivity and related
externalizing and internalizing phenotypes. We genotyped participants with the Smokescreen array and enrolled
siblings discordant for opiate and stimulant addictions. We combined theory-driven (e.g. cognitive modeling, joint
modeling) with data-driven (e.g. machine learning (ML)) computational approaches, which proved particularly
informative and revealed distinct multivariate risk profiles characterizing opiate and stimulant addictions with high
degree of accuracy. Findings from the parent study significantly informed our integrative multidisciplinary
framework (Vassileva & Conrod, 2019), which highlights the potential for distinct dimensions of impulsivity to
inform clinical assessment and intervention development for different types of addictions. Impulsivity also figures
prominently in the neuroscience-based heuristic framework for the neuroclinical assessment of addictions (ANA;
Kwako et al., 2016), which proposes that successful addiction treatment must accommodate the heterogeneity
and different etiological mechanisms implicated in addictions, by performing multidimensional assessments
focusing on three neurofunctional domains of impulsivity and compulsivity: executive function (EF), incentive
salience (IS), and negative emotionality (NE). However, because the ANA framework is based primarily on
findings in alcohol use disorder, it is not well understood how these domains might generalize to other SUD,
such as opiate and stimulant use disorders. The current competing renewal application aims to address this
critical gap with the following specific aims: Aim 1: Identify key personality, neurobehavioral, polygenic, and
computational markers of opiate and stimulant addiction following the ANA framework, using the comprehensive
assessment battery and computational methods developed in the parent DA021421 with 250 participants (100
with opiate use disorder, 100 with stimulant use disorder, and 50 healthy controls); Aim 2: Identify the brain
signatures of the 3 ANA domains (EF, IS, NE)...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10846664
- **Project number:** 5R01DA021421-14
- **Recipient organization:** VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** JASMIN L VASSILEVA
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $508,338
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2008-07-15 → 2026-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10846664

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10846664, Varieties of Impulsivity in Opiate and Stimulant Users (5R01DA021421-14). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10846664. Licensed CC0.

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