The effects of acute abstinence from smoking and performance-based rewards on performance monitoring

Abstract

Abstinence from smoking disrupts performance in multiple cognitive domains, and such cognitive effects may serve to maintain smoking behavior. Rather than having specific effects on a narrow domain of processing, abstinence may disrupt more general cognitive control processes and/or motivation. The present study tested the prediction that overnight abstinence from smoking would disrupt a general performance monitoring system indexed via the error-related negativity (ERN). A secondary aim was to determine the extent to which performance-based monetary rewards improved the ERN among smokers and whether the effect of the reward was diminished during abstinence. The ERN was assessed during a flanker task among 25 heavy, non-treatment-seeking smokers both when smoking as usual and after overnight abstinence; reward and no-reward trial blocks occurred within each session. As predicted, mean ERN amplitude was reduced during abstinence. The ERN was enhanced by reward; this effect did not vary with smoking abstinence. This study provides novel data which suggest that acute abstinence from smoking disrupts a neurophysiological index of a general performance monitoring system that is involved in a range of cognitive functions. The ERN may be a useful complement to narrow-band cognitive studies of abstinence and interventions designed to target cognition in addiction. Because the ERN was concurrently sensitive to abstinence and performance-based incentives, it may be particularly useful for examining the interplay of cognition and motivation in smoking and smoking cessation.