Department of Psychology, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.
Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
Nicotine Tob Res. 2024 Feb 22;26(3):333-341. doi: 10.1093/ntr/ntad152.
Nicotine dependence follows a chronic course that is characterized by repeated relapse, often driven by acute stress and rewarding memories of smoking retrieved from related contexts. These two triggers can also interact, with stress influencing retrieval of contextual memories. However, the roles of these processes in nicotine dependence remain unknown.
We investigated how acute stress biases memory for smoking-associated contexts among smokers (N = 65) using a novel laboratory paradigm. On day 1, participants formed associations between visual stimuli of items (either neutral or related to smoking) and places (background scenes). On day 2 (24 hours later), participants were exposed to an acute laboratory-based stressor (socially evaluated cold pressor test; N = 32) or a matched control condition (N = 33) prior to being tested on their memory recognition and preferences for each item and place. We distinguished the accuracy of memory into specific (ie, precisely correct) or gist (ie, lure items with similar content) categories.
Results demonstrated that the stressor significantly induced physiological and subjective perceived stress responses, and that stressed smokers exhibited a memory bias in favor of smoking-related items. In addition, the stressed group displayed greater preference for both smoking-related items and places that had been paired with the smoking-related items. We also found suggestive evidence that stronger smoking-related memory biases were associated with more severe nicotine dependence (ie, years of smoking).
These results highlight the role of stress in biasing smokers toward remembering contexts associated with smoking, and amplifying their preference for these contexts.
The current study elucidates the role of acute stress in promoting memory biases favoring smoking-related associations among smokers. The results suggest that the retrieval of smoking-biased associative memory could be a crucial factor in stress-related nicotine seeking. This may lead to a potential intervention targeting the extinction of smoking-related context memories as a preventive strategy for stress-induced relapse.
尼古丁依赖是一种慢性疾病，其特征是反复复发，通常由急性压力和与吸烟相关的记忆的奖赏驱动，这些记忆是从相关的情境中提取的。这两个触发因素也可以相互作用，压力会影响与情境相关的记忆的提取。然而，这些过程在尼古丁依赖中的作用尚不清楚。
我们使用一种新的实验室范式研究了急性压力如何影响吸烟者对与吸烟相关的情境的记忆（N=65）。在第 1 天，参与者将视觉刺激的物品（中性或与吸烟相关）和地点（背景场景）形成关联。在第 2 天（24 小时后），参与者在接受急性实验室应激源（社会评价冷加压测试；N=32）或匹配的对照条件（N=33）之前，对每个物品和地点的记忆识别和偏好进行测试。我们将记忆的准确性区分成特定（即精确正确）或要点（即内容相似的诱饵项目）的类别。
结果表明，应激源显著诱导了生理和主观感知的压力反应，并且压力下的吸烟者表现出对与吸烟相关的项目的记忆偏向。此外，压力组对与吸烟相关的项目和与这些项目配对的地点表现出更大的偏好。我们还发现了一些有说服力的证据表明，与吸烟相关的记忆偏差越强，尼古丁依赖越严重（即吸烟年限）。
这些结果强调了压力在促使吸烟者偏向于记住与吸烟相关的情境中的作用，并放大了他们对这些情境的偏好。
本研究阐明了急性压力在促进吸烟者对与吸烟相关的关联的记忆偏向中的作用。研究结果表明，与吸烟相关的联想记忆的提取可能是与压力相关的尼古丁寻求的一个关键因素。这可能导致一种潜在的干预措施，即针对与吸烟相关的情境记忆的消除，作为预防压力引起复发的策略。
