The successor representation in high-risk drinking and alcohol-related contexts.

High-risk drinkers do not differ from low-risk drinkers in their reliance on a reduced random-policy successor representation strategy, especially in alcohol-related contexts.

• Why it matters: Understanding the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying habitual behaviors in addiction is crucial, as current paradigms may overlook context-specific strategies like the SR, contributing to inconsistent evidence about goal-directed versus habitual control.
• What they did: The study involved 520 participants performing an online multi-stage decision-making task in virtual bar or apartment settings, assessing how well they adapted to environmental changes and distinguishing SR from model-based and model-free strategies.
• The result: Both high- and low-risk drinkers rely less on the reduced random-policy SR strategy in alcohol-related contexts and more on model-free control, indicating that substance-related environments downregulate adaptive decision strategies.