Reduction in N2 amplitude in response to deviant drug-related stimuli during a two-choice oddball task in long-term heroin abstainers

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Su, B., Wang, S., Sumich, A. ORCID: 0000-0003-4333-8442, Li, S., Yang, L., Cai, Y. and Wang, G.Y., 2017. Reduction in N2 amplitude in response to deviant drug-related stimuli during a two-choice oddball task in long-term heroin abstainers. Psychopharmacology, 234 (21), pp. 3195-3205. ISSN 0033-3158

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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-017-4707-5

Abstract

Rationale: Chronic heroin use can cause deficits in response inhibition, leading to a loss of control over drug use, particularly in the context of drug-related cues. Unfortunately, heightened incentive salience and motivational bias in response to drug-related cues may exist following abstinence from heroin use.
Objectives: The present study aimed to examine the effect of drug-related cues on response inhibition in long-term heroin abstainers.
Methods: Sixteen long-term (8–24 months) male heroin abstainers and 16 male healthy controls completed a modified two-choice oddball paradigm, in which a neutral “chair” picture served as frequent standard stimuli; the neutral and drug-related pictures served as infrequent deviant stimuli of different conditions respectively. Event-related potentials were compared across groups and conditions.
Results: Our results showed that heroin abstainers exhibited smaller N2d amplitude (deviant minus standard) in the drug cue condition compared to the neutral condition, due to smaller drug-cue deviant-N2 amplitude compared to neutral deviant-N2. Moreover, heroin abstainers had smaller N2d amplitude compared with the healthy controls in the drug cue condition, due to the heroin abstainers having reduced deviant-N2 amplitude compared to standard-N2 in the drug cue condition, which reversed in the healthy controls.
Conclusions: Our findings suggested that heroin addicts still show response inhibition deficits specifically for drug-related cues after longer-term abstinence. The inhibition-related N2 modulation for drug-related could be used as a novel electrophysiological index with clinical implications for assessing the risk of relapse and treatment outcome for heroin users.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Psychopharmacology

Creators:

Su, B., Wang, S., Sumich, A., Li, S., Yang, L., Cai, Y. and Wang, G.Y.

Publisher:

Springer

Date:

November 2017

Volume:

234