Effects of opioid antagonism on functional MRI correlates of explicit and implicit threat processing in healthy volunteers

Background We need to identify novel, tractable therapeutic targets for anxiety disorders. Converging evidence suggests the endogenous opioid system plays a role in modulating affective processing, but its contribution to regulation of threat processing in humans remains unclear. Aims We investigated the neural correlates of non-specific opioid antagonism on explicit and implicit regulation of threatening stimuli in healthy volunteers, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Method I