Resting-state EEG, Substance use and Abstinence After Chronic use: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Resting-state EEG reflects intrinsic brain activity and its alteration represents changes in cognition that are related to neuropathology. Thereby, it provides a way of revealing the neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning chronic substance use. In addition, it is documented that some neurocognitive functions can recover following sustained abstinence. We present a systematic review to synthesize how chronic substance use is associated with resting-state EEG alterations and whether these spontaneously recover from abstinence. A literature search in Medline, PsycINFO, Embase, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Scopus resulted in 4088 articles, of which 57 were included for evaluation. It covered the substance of alcohol (18), tobacco (14), cannabis (8), cocaine (6), opioids (4), methamphetamine (4), and ecstasy (4). EEG analysis methods included spectral power, functional connectivity, and network analyses. It was found that long-term substance use with or without substance use disorder diagnosis was associated with broad intrinsic neural activity alterations, which were usually expressed as neural hyperactivation and decreased neural communication between brain regions. Some studies found the use of alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, cannabis, and methamphetamine was positively correlated with these changes. These alterations can partly recover from abstinence, which differed between drugs and may reflect their neurotoxic degree. Moderating factors that may explain results inconsistency are discussed. In sum, resting-state EEG may act as a potential biomarker of neurotoxic effects of chronic substance use. Recovery effects awaits replication in larger samples with prolonged abstinence. Balanced sex ratio, enlarged sample size, advanced EEG analysis methods, and transparent reporting are recommended for future studies.

Persistent and reversible impacts of smoking on resting-state EEG in chronic smokers and successful long-term abstainers

“…Based on these neurobiological changes, pharmacological targeting [47] and brain stimulation [48] have been suggested as plausible treatments for reversing the impacts of addiction on the brain. To date, however, previous studies focused on either the impacts of brief abstinence or that of acute nicotine consumption [49], and it still has not been directly examined whether the neural hints of individuals’ smoking history in the brain ever disappear even after a long period of successful abstinence. The current study addresses this gap by including past-smokers who smoked for at least six months and stayed abstinent for longer than 20 years.…”

“…Relatively little is known about the impacts of smoking on EEG coherence [49]. One previous study, while the sample size was small, reported a consistent pattern in alpha coherence, such that smokers showed higher coherence than age-matched non-smokers [55].…”

A scoping review of electroencephalographic (EEG) markers for tracking neurophysiological changes and predicting outcomes in substance use disorder treatment

“…Electroencephalography (EEG) is a neurophysiological technique for measuring brain activity, and although much is known about EEG activity in acute (Fairbairn et al, 2021 ) and chronic (Hamidovic and Wang, 2019 ; Liu et al, 2022 ) substance use, knowledge regarding EEG activity in relation to longitudinal abstinence and treatment outcomes is sparse (Houston and Schlienz, 2018 ; Stewart et al, 2019b ; Jurado-Barba et al, 2020 ). However, building on over half a century of concentrated EEG research, there is a growing interest in applying EEG approaches for SUD treatment research.…”

“…However, building on over half a century of concentrated EEG research, there is a growing interest in applying EEG approaches for SUD treatment research. Metrics derived from EEG have good test-retest reliability (Tenke et al, 2017 ; Ip et al, 2018 ; Malcolm et al, 2019 ; Roach et al, 2019 ; Vázquez-Marrufo et al, 2020 ; Cofresí et al, 2022 ), are highly heritable (Van Beijsterveldt and Van Baal, 2002 ; de Geus, 2010 ; Gilmore et al, 2010 ) and widely used in SUD (Parvaz et al, 2011 ; Almeida-Antunes et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2021b ; Liu et al, 2022 ), depression (de Aguiar Neto and Rosa, 2019 ), schizophrenia (Perrottelli et al, 2021 ), psychosis (Wang et al, 2022 ), neurodegeneration (Horvath et al, 2018 ), and pain (Ploner and May, 2018 ) research. High-quality EEG provides direct and millisecond-level access to regional and global neural activity (Sadaghiani et al, 2022 ), and indexes oscillatory communication (i.e., connectivity) within and between networks (Sadaghiani et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Reviews of SUD-EEG research published since the year 2000 have summarized findings across various SUDs (Bauer, 2001a ; Kouri and Lukas, 2001 ; Ceballos et al, 2009 ; Campanella et al, 2014 ; Houston and Schlienz, 2018 ; Stewart et al, 2019b ; Zhang et al, 2021b ; Liu et al, 2022 ), for specific SUDs, e.g., AUD (Hamidovic and Wang, 2019 ; Jurado-Barba et al, 2020 ; Agarwal et al, 2021 ), OUD (Wang et al, 2015 ; Motlagh et al, 2016 ; Ieong and Yuan, 2017 ; Stewart et al, 2019a ), for specific ERPs (Campanella et al, 2014 ; Hamidovic and Wang, 2019 ; Fairbairn et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2021b ), for resting EEG (Liu et al, 2022 ), with an emphasis on longitudinal abstinence or treatment-related effects (Houston and Schlienz, 2018 ; Stewart et al, 2019b ), and more recently, in regards to brain stimulation (Zhang et al, 2019 ; Habelt et al, 2020 ). Although most past EEG studies have been cross-sectional and focused on differences between SUD vs. non-substance-using controls, there is an emerging and much-needed set of SUD-EEG work emphasizing longitudinal treatment- and/or abstinence-related changes (Houston and Schlienz, 2018 ; Stewart et al, 2019b ), paralleled by ongoing developments in SUD-MRI research (Moeller and Paulus, 2018 ; Hammond et al, 2019 ; Stewart et al, 2019b ; Parvaz et al, 2022 ).…”