Proposing a “Brain Health Checkup (BHC)” as a Global Potential “Standard of Care” to Overcome Reward Dysregulation in Primary Care Medicine: Coupling Genetic Risk Testing and Induction of “Dopamine Homeostasis”

Eric R. Braverman, Catherine A. Dennen, Mark S. Gold, Abdalla Bowirrat, Ashim Gupta, David Baron, A. Kenison Roy, David E. Smith, Jean Lud Cadet and Kenneth Blum
Additional contact information
Eric R. Braverman: The Kenneth Blum Institute on Behavior & Neurogenetics, Austin, TX 78701, USA
Catherine A. Dennen: The Kenneth Blum Institute on Behavior & Neurogenetics, Austin, TX 78701, USA
Mark S. Gold: Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA
Abdalla Bowirrat: Department of Molecular Biology, Adelson School of Medicine, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel
Ashim Gupta: Future Biologics, Lawrenceville, GA 30043, USA
David Baron: Division of Addiction Research & Education, Center for Psychiatry, Medicine & Primary Care (Office of Provost), Western University Health Sciences, Pomona, CA 91766, USA
A. Kenison Roy: Department of Psychiatry, Tulane School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA
David E. Smith: Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
Jean Lud Cadet: The Molecular Neuropsychiatry Research Branch, NIH National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA
Kenneth Blum: The Kenneth Blum Institute on Behavior & Neurogenetics, Austin, TX 78701, USA

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 9, 1-26

Abstract: In 2021, over 100,000 people died prematurely from opioid overdoses. Neuropsychiatric and cognitive impairments are underreported comorbidities of reward dysregulation due to genetic antecedents and epigenetic insults. Recent genome-wide association studies involving millions of subjects revealed frequent comorbidity with substance use disorder (SUD) in a sizeable meta-analysis of depression. It found significant associations with the expression of NEGR1 in the hypothalamus and DRD2 in the nucleus accumbens, among others. However, despite the rise in SUD and neuropsychiatric illness, there are currently no standard objective brain assessments being performed on a routine basis. The rationale for encouraging a standard objective Brain Health Check (BHC) is to have extensive data available to treat clinical syndromes in psychiatric patients. The BHC would consist of a group of reliable, accurate, cost-effective, objective assessments involving the following domains: Memory, Attention, Neuropsychiatry, and Neurological Imaging. Utilizing primarily PUBMED, over 36 years of virtually all the computerized and written-based assessments of Memory, Attention, Psychiatric, and Neurological imaging were reviewed, and the following assessments are recommended for use in the BHC: Central Nervous System Vital Signs (Memory), Test of Variables of Attention (Attention), Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory III (Neuropsychiatric), and Quantitative Electroencephalogram/P300/Evoked Potential (Neurological Imaging). Finally, we suggest continuing research into incorporating a new standard BHC coupled with qEEG/P300/Evoked Potentials and genetically guided precision induction of “dopamine homeostasis” to diagnose and treat reward dysregulation to prevent the consequences of dopamine dysregulation from being epigenetically passed on to generations of our children.

Keywords: Brain Health Check (BHC); memory; attention; neuropsychiatry; qEEG; P300; substance use disorder (SUD); reward dysregulation; genetic addiction risk scores; epigenetics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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