School of Psychology, Northwest Normal University, 967 Anning East Road, Lanzhou, People's Republic of China.
Division of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2017 Nov;234(21):3195-3205. doi: 10.1007/s00213-017-4707-5. Epub 2017 Aug 4.
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.
The present study aimed to examine the effect of drug-related cues on response inhibition in long-term heroin abstainers.
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.
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.
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.
慢性海洛因使用可导致反应抑制缺陷，导致对药物使用失去控制，尤其是在与药物相关的线索情况下。不幸的是，在戒断海洛因后，对与药物相关的线索可能存在更高的激励显著性和动机偏差。
本研究旨在研究与药物相关的线索对长期海洛因戒除者反应抑制的影响。
16 名长期（8-24 个月）男性海洛因戒除者和 16 名男性健康对照者完成了改良的二择一Oddball 范式，其中中性“椅子”图片作为频繁的标准刺激；中性和药物相关图片分别作为不同条件的不频繁偏差刺激。在组间和条件间比较了事件相关电位。
我们的结果表明，与中性条件相比，海洛因戒除者在药物线索条件下表现出较小的 N2d 振幅（偏差减去标准），这是由于药物线索偏差-N2 振幅小于中性偏差-N2。此外，与健康对照组相比，海洛因戒除者在药物线索条件下的 N2d 振幅较小，这是由于海洛因戒除者在药物线索条件下的偏差-N2 振幅与标准-N2 相比减小，而在健康对照组中则相反。
我们的发现表明，海洛因成瘾者在更长时间的戒断后，仍然表现出对与药物相关的线索的反应抑制缺陷。与药物相关的抑制相关 N2 调制可作为一种新的电生理指标，具有评估海洛因使用者复发风险和治疗效果的临床意义。
