Smokers exhibit biased neural processing of smoking and affective images.

Abstract

Objective There has been growing interest in the role that implicit processing of drug cues can play in motivating drug use behavior. However, the extent to which drug cue processing biases relate to the processing biases exhibited to other types of evocative stimuli is largely unknown. The goal of the present study was to determine how the implicit cognitive processing of smoking cues relates to the processing of affective cues using a novel paradigm. Methods Smokers (n = 50) and non-smokers (n = 38) completed a picture-viewing task, in which participants were presented with a series of smoking, pleasant, unpleasant and neutral images while engaging in a distractor task designed to direct controlled resources away from conscious processing of image content. Electroencephalogram recordings were obtained throughout the task for extraction of event-related potentials (ERPs). Results Smokers exhibited differential processing of smoking cues across three different ERP indices compared to nonsmokers. Comparable effects were found for pleasant cues on two of these indices. Late cognitive processing of smoking and pleasant cues was associated with nicotine dependence and cigarette use. Conclusions Results suggest that cognitive biases may extend across classes of stimuli among smokers. This raises important questions about the fundamental meaning of cognitive biases and suggests the need to consider generalized cognitive biases in theories of drug use behavior and interventions based on cognitive bias modification.

The reality of “food porn”: Larger brain responses to food‐related cues than to erotic images predict cue‐induced eating

“…Preclinical studies showed that the representation of value in the brain's valuation system adapts to the range of values available at any given time (Padoa‐Schioppa, ). Hence, including a wide array of emotional categories is necessary to accurately assess the incentive salience attributed to cues predicting rewards (Oliver et al, ; Versace, Engelmann, et al, ; Versace & Schembre, ). The large LPP difference that we observed between the predictive and the nonpredictive cues in this experiment suggests that researchers interested in understanding the role of cues as triggers of compulsive eating should consider how the availability of rewards during the experiment and the presence of other emotionally arousing stimuli might impact participants' neurobehavioral responses to the cues.…”

“…The second requisite to test our hypothesis is to classify individuals based on their tendency to attribute incentive salience to cues predicting food rewards. A classification based only on the differences between LPPs evoked by food‐related cues and neutral stimuli would not be appropriate because the responses evoked by nonfood‐related emotional stimuli must be taken into account to appropriately scale and interpret the cue‐minus‐neutral LPP difference (Oliver, Jentink, Drobes, & Evans, ; Versace, Engelmann, et al, ; Versace & Schembre, ). To avoid this pitfall, we proposed cluster analysis as a data‐driven classification approach capable of taking into account the LPP responses evoked by more than two contents.…”

The Late Positive Potentials Evoked by Cigarette-Related and Emotional Images Show no Gender Differences in Smokers

“…While self-report offers an important window into the individual’s subjective experience, it does not provide information about the neuropsychological underpinnings of these experiences, therefore depriving researchers of information that can be used to develop new relapse prevention treatments 11 . Furthermore, if just cigarette-related and neutral stimuli are included in cue-reactivity experiments, researchers cannot draw strong conclusion about the meaning or the strength of the responses evoked by cigarette-related stimuli 11,12 . By including other motivationally relevant stimuli, varying both valence and arousal, researchers can determine the strength of the responses evoked by cigarette-related cues in relation to other non-drug-related motivationally relevant stimuli and better test the hypothesis that cigarette-related cues “hijack human brain motivational systems and promote drug seeking over alternative behaviors” 11 .…”

Estimating statistical power for event-related potential studies using the late positive potential

“…Identifying emotions’ neural correlates has high clinical relevance because most psychological disorders are characterized by altered affective processes (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Dunning et al, 2011; Moeller et al, 2014; Oliver, Jentink, Drobes, & Evans, 2016; Simmons et al, 2008; Wirkner et al, 2017; X. Zhang et al, 2014), and associating neural responses to specific symptoms and behaviors is likely to inform and foster the development of new evidence-based treatments (Dunning et al, 2011; Robbins, Gillan, Smith, de Wit, & Ersche, 2012; Wirkner et al, 2017).…”