Kristine Rømer ThomsenAarhus University | AU · Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research
Kristine Rømer Thomsen
PhD
About
48
Publications
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
Associate Prof, Center for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University. My current research interests include: Development/testing of brief interventions to help prevent and intervene with harmful substance use; Development/testing of new types of treatment for substance addiction; Cognitive and neuropsychological risk factors and consequences of substance use among youth; The impact of different cannabinoids (e.g. THC and CBD) on brain, behavior, and cognition.
Publications
Publications (48)
Anhedonia, the lack of pleasure, has been shown to be a critical feature of a range of psychiatric disorders. Yet, it is currently measured primarily through subjective self-reports and as such has been difficult to submit to rigorous scientific analysis. New insights from affective neuroscience hold considerable promise in improving our understand...
When experiences become meaningful to the self, they are linked to synchronous activity in a paralimbic network of self-awareness and dopaminergic activity. This network includes medial pre-frontal and medial parietal/posterior cingulate cortices, where transcranial magnetic stimulation may transiently impair self-awareness. Conversely, we hypothes...
The incentive sensitization theory is a promising model for understanding the mechanisms underlying drug addiction, and has received support in animal and human studies. So far the theory has not been applied to the case of behavioral addictions like Gambling Disorder, despite sharing clinical symptoms and underlying neurobiology. We examine the re...
The introduction of magnetoencephalography has made it possible to study electromagnetic signaling in deeper, paralimbic cortical structures such as the medial prefrontal/anterior cingulate (ACC) and medial parietal/posterior cingulate (PCC) cortices. Self-awareness and self-control have been attributed to these regions. To test the hypothesis that...
Liberal acceptance, overconfidence, and increased activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine have been proposed to account for abnormal sensory experiences, for instance, hallucinations in schizophrenia. In normal subjects, increased sensory experience in Yoga Nidra meditation is linked to striatal dopamine release. We therefore hypothesize that the...
Background: Adolescent drinking has historically been closely linked to social events, and across many countries, students typically increase drinking rates when they transition to upper secondary school. COVID-19-related restrictions offered a unique possibility to examine how changes in social life impact adolescent drinking in the transition to...
![Distribution of [¹¹C] Ro15-4513. Main binding sites with placebo are...](publication/360906420/figure/fig2/AS:11431281115303419@1674828627854/Distribution-of-C-Ro15-4513-Main-binding-sites-with-placebo-are-prefrontal-and_Q320.jpg)
Biological evolution has led to more and more complex organisms, including humans with highly developed brains. This has facilitated adaptation to changing circumstances through conscious self-monitoring, allowing individuals to learn from experiences and to form cultural entities. More recently, a paralimbic brain network instrumental in self-awar...
Cannabis use peaks during adolescence and emerging adulthood, and cannabis use disorder (CUD) is associated with a wide range of adverse outcomes. This is particularly pertinent in youth, because the developing brain may be more vulnerable to adverse effects of frequent cannabis use. Combining evidence-based psychosocial interventions with safe and...
Background: There is consistent evidence that community and clinical samples of individuals with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) have attentional biases toward alcohol cues. The alcohol attentional control training program (AACTP) has shown promise for retraining these biases and decreasing alcohol consumption in community samples of excessive drinke...
Cocaine-related emergency department admissions are increasing, and cocaine seizures are at an all-time high in Europe. Our aim was to investigate the trends in purity and adulterants over time in cocaine available to cocaine users at street level in Denmark. We used a representative sample of cocaine seized at street level and analyzed by the nati...
Background
The use of cannabis as medicine (CaM) both prescribed and non-prescribed has increased markedly in the last decade, mirrored in a global shift in cannabis policy towards a more permissive stance. There is some evidence that cannabis functions as a substitute for prescription drugs, particularly opioids; however, more knowledge is needed...
Background: The prediction of alcohol consumption in youths and particularly biomarkers of resilience, is critical for early intervention to reduce the risk of subsequent harmful alcohol use.
Methods: At baseline, the longitudinal relaxation rate (R1), indexing grey matter myelination (i.e. myeloarchitecture), was assessed in 86 adolescents/young a...
Background
Several studies have found that externalizing symptoms are associated with harmful substance use. Also, findings suggest that girls are more likely to report internalizing symptoms compared to boys. This study assessed the association between internalizing and externalizing symptoms (independent variables) and substance use and alcohol-r...
This is a commentary on Girgis et al, 2020. The commentary focuses primarily on the differences between boys and girls, where internalizing symptoms are more strongly related to substance use in girls than in boys: and often over-looked difference.
Girgis J. Pringsheim T. Williams J. et al.Cannabis use and internalizing/externalizing symptoms in y...
![FIGURE 2 | Distribution of [11C] Ro15-4513 GABA receptor ligand. After...](publication/338863538/figure/fig2/AS:852310947295236@1580218173629/Distribution-of-11C-Ro15-4513-GABA-receptor-ligand-After-the-placebo-the-ligand-was_Q320.jpg)
The electrophysiology of the paralimbic network (“default mode”) for self-awareness has drawn much attention in the past couple of decades. In contrast, knowledge of the molecular organization of conscious experience has only lately come into focus. We here review newer data on dopaminergic control of awareness in humans, particularly in self-aware...
Adolescence presents with its own substance use risks, behaviors, and outcomes that result from a complex intersection of neurocognitive, biological, and social changes that occur during this sensitive neurodevelopmental period. We provide an overview of trends in adolescent alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco use in the United States and the various de...
In an attempt to improve attention bias modification (ABM), we tested whether an attentional training protocol which featured monetary operant conditioning of eye-gaze to avoid alcohol stimuli in alcohol-dependent patients could reduce attention, craving and relapse to alcohol. We employed a pilot randomized control trial (RCT) with 21 detoxified a...
Teenagere er udviklingsmæssigt forskellige fra voksne og har andre behandlingsbehov end voksne. I denne artikel ser vi på rusmiddelbrug blandt teenagere fra et neuroudviklingsperspektiv og diskuterer, hvordan denne indsigt kan bruges til at udvikle nye retninger i behandlingen af rusmiddelbrug blandt teenagere.
Globally, recent studies report increases in Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) concentration in seized samples of cannabis for human consumption. This is important, because use of cannabis with a high concentration of THC has been linked to a number of adverse health outcomes. The objective of this study was to assess recent changes in the composition...
Abstract
Rationale Identifying the predictors of relapse in detoxified alcohol-dependent patients is crucial for effective surveillance
procedures and the optimization of treatment. Physiological measures such as functional MRI activity and heart rate variability
have been shown as potential markers of relapse prediction.
Objectives Our aim was to...
Impulsivity has been suggested as a neurocognitive endophenotype conferring risk across a number of neuropsychiatric conditions, including substance and behavioural addictions, eating disorders, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. We used a paradigm with interspecies translation validity (the four-choice serial reaction time task, 4CSRTT)...
Introduction
We have previously shown that an interaction between medial prefrontal and parietal cortices is instrumental in promoting self‐awareness via synchronizing oscillations in the gamma range. The synchronization of these oscillations is modulated by dopamine release. Given that such oscillations result from intermittent GABA stimulation of...
Impulsivity has been suggested as a neurocognitive endophenotype conferring risk across a number of neuropsychiatric conditions, including substance and behavioural addictions, eating disorders, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. We used a paradigm with interspecies translation validity (the four-choice serial reaction time task, 4CSRTT)...
Although adolescents are developmentally distinct from adults, they often receive addiction treatment based on adult models. This is problematic because adolescents face significantly different conditions in addiction treatment, including distinct basic biological and neurodevelopmental stages, unique sociodevelopmental concerns, distinctive addict...
Best Practice Psykiatri. Se artiklen her: https://www.researchgate.net/publications/create?publicationType=article
Hvordan bliver vi bedre til at forebygge, at unge får problemer med rusmidler eller andre potentielt afhængighedsskabende aktiviteter, såsom et stort forbrug af internet gaming eller pornografi? Én metode er at blive klogere på, hvilke unge vi skal være særligt opmærksomme på. Hos Center for Rusmiddelforskning er vi i gang med en undersøgelse, hvis...
The aim of this study is to investigate associations between use of cigarettes, cannabis, and alcohol (CCA) and psychosocial problems among adolescents with different cultural backgrounds living in Nordic countries. Data from six questionnaire-based surveys conducted in Denmark, Norway, and Greenland, with participants from different cultural and r...
Background:
Controlling drinking behaviour requires the ability to block out distracting alcohol cues in situations in which drinking is inappropriate or harmful. However, at present few studies have investigated whether distraction and response inhibition to contextual alcohol cues are related to alcohol use in adolescents and young adults. We ai...
Background and aims
Impulsivity is a risk factor for addictive behaviors. The UPPS-P impulsivity model has been associated with substance addiction and gambling disorder, but its role in other non-substance addiction-related behaviors is less understood. We sought to examine associations between UPPS-P impulsivity traits and indicators of multiple...
Cannabis kan påvirke vores hjerne, kognition og adfærd på forskellige måder. Det afhænger af, hvilken type af cannabis man indtager.
Rusmidler kan fremkalde og forværre psykotiske symptomer. Men er nogen rusmidler værre end andre, eksempelvis for mennesker, der lider af skizofreni? Ved at kombinere data fra to danske registre har vi bidraget til at svare på dette vigtige spørgsmål.
Problems related to the capacity to successfully engage response inhibition are considered a risk factor for the development of substance use disorders (SUDs), but the evidence has been predominantly cross-sectional. In this commentary, we argue that recent longitudinal studies with multi-modal measures of response inhibition can improve understand...
Background:
Patients with schizophrenia and comorbid drug use disorders (DUD) have a severe course of illness. Despite strong evidence that drug use can exacerbate psychotic symptoms, we have limited knowledge of how specific drugs may increase risk of schizophrenia readmission in this group. This study aimed to assess drug-related predictors of r...
Cannabis use represents a major public health issue throughout the globe. Yet, we still lack the most fundamental knowledge on long-term effects of cannabis on neural, cognitive, and behavioral function. Part of this stems from how cannabis has been measured historically. To this end, most empirical examinations of cannabis have consolidated all ty...
Background:
In adolescence, psychological problems and regular use of alcohol, cigarettes, cannabis and other drugs (AOD) tend to cluster together, strongly indicating that certain groups of young people are at elevated risk of developing a problematic use of AOD.
Objective:
The aim of the present study was to develop an easy-to-implement screen...
Ribot’s long standing definition of anhedonia as the inability to experience pleasure has been challenged recently following progress in affective neuroscience. In particular, accumulating evidence suggests that reward consists of multiple subcomponents of wanting, liking and learning, as initially outlined by Berridge and Robinson, and these proce...
Supporting Information
Infant faces elicit early, specific activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a key cortical region for reward and affective processing. A test of the causal relationship between infant facial configuration and OFC activity is provided by naturally occurring disruptions to the face structure. One such disruption is cleft lip, a small change to on...
Slot machines are among the most addictive forms of gambling, and pathological gambling slot machine players represent the largest group of treatment seekers, accounting for 35% to 93% of the population. Pathological gambling sufferers have significantly higher response frequency (games / time) on slot machines compared with non-problem gamblers, w...
Emotion and reward have been proposed to be closely linked to conscious experience, but empirical data are lacking. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays a central role in the hedonic dimension of conscious experience; thus potentially a key region in interactions between emotion and consciousness. Here we tested the impact of emotion on consci...
In this study we compared gambling behaviour of 15 pathological gamblers (PG) and 15 non-problem gamblers (NPG) on two conditions of a commercially available slot machine. One condition used a commercially available two-second event frequency (games per minute), while the other condition used an experimental three-second event frequency. The paybac...
The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between gambling severity and depressive symptoms in pathological gamblers addicted to slot machines, with the hypothesis that comorbid depressive symptoms are associated with exacerbated gambling symptoms and behavior. Twenty controls and 20 pathological gamblers with different levels...
Projects
Projects (2)
Background: There is consistent evidence that community and clinical samples of individuals with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) have attentional biases towards alcohol cues. The attentional control training program (ACTP) has shown promise for retraining these biases and decreasing alcohol consumption in community samples of individuals with an AUD. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of ACTP in clinical AUD samples. The main aim of the present study is to investigate whether primary pharmacological and psychological evidence-based alcohol treatment can be enhanced by implementing a gamified ACTP smartphone application as an add-on treatment for younger AUD patients.
Design and methods: The study will be implemented as an randomized controlled trial. A total of 317 consecutively enrolled patients with AUD will be recruited from alcohol outpatient clinics in Denmark. Patients will be randomized into one of three groups upon initiation of primary alcohol treatment: Group A: a gamified ACTP smartphone application + treatment as usual (TAU), Group B: a gamified ACTP sham-control application + TAU, or Group C: only TAU. Treatment outcomes will be assessed at baseline, post-treatment, and at 3- and 6-month follow-ups. Repeated-measures MANOVA will be applied to compare the trajectories of the groups over time on attentional bias, craving and drinking outcomes. It is hypothesized that Group A will achieve better treatment outcomes than Group B and Group C.
Perspectives: Because attentional biases towards alcohol cues are proportional to the amount of alcohol consumption, and these biases are not addressed within current evidence-based treatment programs, this study is expected to provide new evidence regarding the effectiveness of the gamified ACTP in a clinical population. Furthermore, due to promising results found using ACTP in community AUD samples, there is a high probability that the ACTP treatment in this study will also be effective, thereby allowing ACTP to be readily implemented in clinical settings. Finally, we expect that this study will increase the effectiveness of evidence-based AUD treatment and will introduce low-cost and easily available gamified treatment targeting younger AUD patients. Thus, overall this study is likely to have an impact at the scientific, clinical and societal levels.
To adapt and test a secondary prevention intervention (group-based motivational interviewing (MI) intervention) for problem drinking, and its related health risks among Danish students in upper secondary school. The project will be structured over two phases: the first phase is a qualitative study focused on adapting a group-based MI intervention developed in the U.S. to Danish adolescents by conducting focus groups with Danish adolescent. The second phase is focused on testing the effects of the Danish MI intervention on adolescent problem drinking, and examining the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention.
