Frontoparietal attentional network activation differs between smokers and nonsmokers during affective cognition

Abstract

Smoking withdrawal-induced disruption of affect and cognition is associated with dysregulated prefrontal brain function although little is known regarding the neural foci of smoker-nonsmoker differences during affective cognition. Thus, the current study utilized fMRI to identify smoker-nonsmoker differences in affective cognition. Thirty-four healthy volunteers (17 smokers, 17 nonsmokers) underwent fMRI during an affective Stroop task (aST). The aST includes emotional cue-reactivity trials, and response selection trials that contain either neutral or negative emotional distractors. Smokers had less activation during negative cue-reactivity trials in regions subserving emotional awareness (i.e. posterior cingulate), inhibitory control (i.e. inferior frontal gyrus) and conflict resolution (i.e. anterior cingulate); whereas during response selection trials with negative emotional distractors, smokers had greater activation in a frontoparietal attentional network (i.e. middle frontal and supramarginal gyri). Exploratory analyses revealed that task accuracy was positively correlated with ACC and IFG BOLD response. These findings suggests that chronic nicotine use may reduce inhibitory control and conflict resolution of emotional distraction, and result in recruiting additional attentional resources during emotional interference on cognition.

Pretreatment measures of brain structure and reward-processing brain function in cannabis dependence: An exploratory study of relationships with abstinence during behavioral treatment1

“…However, the cannabis-dependent and HC groups were not matched for daily tobacco use. Previous studies suggest significant effects of tobacco use on brain function and structure (e.g., Brody et al, 2004; Froeliger et al, 2013); thus, our findings may have been confounded by tobacco smoking in the cannabis-dependent group. However, the rate of tobacco use (75%) among the cannabis-dependent participants included in this study was equivalent to that found in the parent RCT (74%; Carroll et al 2012).…”

Dissociated Effects of Anticipating Smoking versus Monetary Reward in the Caudate as a Function of Smoking Abstinence

“…One possibility is that the pattern of results during abstinence may be the result of altered top-down prefrontal modulation of striatal reward processing. Neurons of the prefrontal cortex are known to project to the head of the caudate (69), and recent studies have demonstrated altered activation in several prefrontal regions during affective processing or cognitive control tasks among smokers (70-72). Further evidence suggests that activation in these regions, including the anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, may be heightened during abstinence (73-75), possibly reflecting state-based inefficiency in inhibitory control networks.…”

Common and distinct neural correlates of inhibitory dysregulation: Stroop fMRI study of cocaine addiction and intermittent explosive disorder

“…This region forms part of the frontoparietal attention network, which participates in attentional/top-down control (Corbetta and Shulman, 2002, Weidner et al, 2009) and response selection (Hackley, 2009, Yalachkov et al, 2010), both important cognitive functions for resolving Stroop interference. While some recent investigations have reported higher activation within or adjacent to this region in addicted samples, these studies either used different contrasts (commission errors) (Castelluccio et al, 2014) or studied different addictions (nicotine) (Froeliger et al, 2013). Here, higher supramarginal activity in controls may have reflected healthy cognitive/attentional control.…”