Roberts Gloria M P, Nestor Liam, Garavan Hugh
School of Psychology and Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Brain Res. 2009 Oct 6;1292:71-81. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2009.07.040. Epub 2009 Jul 23.
It has been consistently shown that ecstasy users display impairments in learning and memory performance. In addition, working memory processing in ecstasy users has been shown to be associated with neural alterations in hippocampal and/or cortical regions as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Using functional imaging and a face-learning task, we investigated neural correlates of encoding and recalling face-name associations in 20 recreational drug users whose predominant drug use was ecstasy and 20 controls. To address the potential confounding effects of the cannabis use of the ecstasy using group, a second analysis included 14 previously tested cannabis users (Nestor, L., Roberts, G., Garavan, H., Hester, R., 2008. Deficits in learning and memory: parahippocampal hyperactivity and frontocortical hypoactivity in cannabis users. Neuroimage 40, 1328-1339). Ecstasy users performed significantly worse in learning and memory compared to controls and cannabis users. A conjunction analysis of the encode and recall phases of the task revealed ecstasy-specific hyperactivity in bilateral frontal regions, left temporal, right parietal, bilateral temporal, and bilateral occipital brain regions. Ecstasy-specific hypoactivity was evident in the right dorsal anterior cingulated cortex (ACC) and left posterior cingulated cortex. In both ecstasy and cannabis groups brain activation was decreased in the right medial frontal gyrus, left parahippocampal gyrus, left dorsal cingulate gyrus, and left caudate. These results elucidated ecstasy-related deficits, only some of which might be attributed to cannabis use. These ecstasy-specific effects may be related to the vulnerability of isocortical and allocortical regions to the neurotoxic effects of ecstasy.
一直以来的研究表明，摇头丸使用者在学习和记忆表现方面存在缺陷。此外，通过功能磁共振成像（fMRI）测量发现，摇头丸使用者的工作记忆处理与海马体和/或皮质区域的神经改变有关。我们使用功能成像和一项面部学习任务，对20名主要使用摇头丸的娱乐性药物使用者和20名对照组进行了研究，以探究编码和回忆面部-名字关联的神经相关性。为了应对摇头丸使用组中使用大麻可能产生的潜在混杂效应，第二项分析纳入了14名先前测试过的大麻使用者（内斯特，L.，罗伯茨，G.，加拉万，H.，赫斯特，R.，2008年。学习和记忆缺陷：大麻使用者海马旁回过度活跃和前额叶皮质活动不足。《神经影像学》40卷，第1328 - 1339页）。与对照组和大麻使用者相比，摇头丸使用者在学习和记忆方面表现明显更差。对任务的编码和回忆阶段进行联合分析发现，双侧额叶区域、左侧颞叶、右侧顶叶、双侧颞叶和双侧枕叶脑区存在摇头丸特异性的过度活跃。摇头丸特异性的活动不足在右侧背侧前扣带回皮质（ACC）和左侧后扣带回皮质中很明显。在摇头丸组和大麻组中，右侧内侧额回、左侧海马旁回、左侧背侧扣带回和左侧尾状核的脑激活均减少。这些结果阐明了与摇头丸相关的缺陷，其中只有一些可能归因于大麻使用。这些摇头丸特异性效应可能与同型皮质和异皮质区域对摇头丸神经毒性作用的易感性有关。
