In addition to difficulties in daily social functioning, regular cocaine users have decrements in social processing (the cognitive and affective processes underlying social behavior) relative to non-users. Little is known, however, about the effects of clinically-relevant pharmacological agents, such as cocaine and potential treatment medications, on social processing in cocaine users. Such drug effects could potentially alleviate or compound baseline social processing decrements in cocaine abusers. Here, we assessed the individual and combined effects of smoked cocaine and a potential treatment medication, Levodopa-Carbidopa-Entacapone (LCE), on Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) in cocaine smokers. Healthy non-treatment-seeking cocaine smokers (N = 14; 2 female) completed this 11-day inpatient within-subjects study. Participants received LCE (titrated to 400mg/100mg/200mg BID) for 5 days with the remaining time on placebo. The order of medication administration was counterbalanced. FER was measured twice during target LCE dosing and twice on placebo: once without cocaine and once after repeated cocaine doses. LCE increased the response threshold for identification of facial fear, biasing responses away from fear identification. Cocaine had no effect on FER. Results highlight the possibility for candidate pharmacotherapies to have unintended impacts on social processing in cocaine users, potentially exacerbating already existing difficulties in this population.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.