Abstract
Background: There is a trade-off between drug-related impulsive process and cognitive reflective process among ex-drug abusers. The present study aimed to investigate the impulsive effects of methamphetamine-related stimuli on working memory (WM) performance by manipulating WM load in abstinent ex-methamphetamine users.Methods: Thirty abstinent ex-methamphetamine users and 30 nonaddict matched control participants were recruited in this study. We used a modified Sternberg task in which participants were instructed to memorize three different sets of methamphetamine-related and non–drug-related words (three, five, or seven words) while performing a secondary attention-demanding task as an interference.Results: Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that reaction times of abstinent ex-methamphetamine users increased during low WM load (three words) compared to the control group (p = 0.01). No significant differences were observed during high WM loads (five or seven words) (both p’s > 0.1). Besides, reaction times of the experimental group during trials with high interference (three, five, or seven words) were not significantly different compared to the control group (p > 0.2).Conclusion: These findings imply that increasing WM load may provide an efficient buffer against attentional capture by salient stimuli (i.e., methamphetamine-related words). This buffer might modify the effect of interference bias. Besides, presenting methamphetamine-related stimuli might facilitate the encoding phase due to bias toward task-relevant stimuli. This finding has an important implication, suggesting that performing concurrent demanding tasks may reduce the power of salient stimuli and thus improve the efficiency of emotional regulation strategies.
Highlights
Methamphetamine, which is an extremely addictive neurotoxic drug, is the second most used illegal drug after cannabis [1]
Planned contrasts analysis revealed that mean scores for the first bias Reaction Times (RTs) of the methamphetamine user group significantly increased during the performance of the 3-word working memory (WM) compared to the control group (p = 0.01)
We investigated the impulsive effects of methamphetamine-related stimuli on WM performance in abstinent ex-methamphetamine users
Summary
Methamphetamine, which is an extremely addictive neurotoxic drug, is the second most used illegal drug after cannabis [1]. Theoretical models and empirical evidence support a role for the modulation of addiction with cognitive-based approaches [11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. Dual-process models of addiction suggest that addictive behaviors are affected by the dominance of drug-related impulsive processes over the reflective processes [13, 18, 19]. Several studies have shown that the drug-related impulsive process is spontaneous, fast, and relatively unconscious, while the reflective process is deliberate, slow, and conscious [13, 18, 19]. There is a trade-off between drug-related impulsive process and cognitive reflective process among ex-drug abusers. The present study aimed to investigate the impulsive effects of methamphetamine-related stimuli on working memory (WM) performance by manipulating WM load in abstinent ex-methamphetamine users
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