title: Brain reactivity to emotional, neutral and cigarette-related stimuli in smokers.
abstract: Addiction has been described as the pathological usurpation of the neural mechanisms normally involved in emotional processing. Event-related potentials (ERPs) can provide a non-invasive index of neural responses associated with the processing of emotionally relevant stimuli and serve as a tool for examining temporal and spatial commonalities between the processing of intrinsically motivating stimuli and drug cues. Before beginning a smoking cessation program, 116 smokers participated in a laboratory session in which dense-array ERPs (129 sensors) were recorded during the presentation of pictures with emotional (pleasant and unpleasant), neutral and cigarette-related content. ERP differences among categories were analyzed with use of randomization tests on time regions of interest identified by temporal principal component analysis. Both emotional and cigarette-related pictures prompted significantly more positivity than did neutral pictures over central, parietal, and frontal sites in the 452-508 ms time window. During the 212-316 ms time window, both pleasant and cigarette-related pictures prompted less positivity than neutral images did. Cigarette-related pictures enhanced the amplitude of the P1 component (136-144 ms) above the levels measured in the emotional and neutral conditions. These results support the hypothesis that for smokers, cigarette-related cues are motivationally relevant stimuli that capture attentional resources early during visual processing and engage brain circuits normally involved in the processing of intrinsically emotional stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Behavioral Science, Unit 1330, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, P.O. Box 301439, Houston, TX 77030, USA. fversace@mdanderson.org
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Versace
authors.forename: Jennifer A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Minnix
authors.forename: Jason D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.forename: Cho Y
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Lam
authors.forename: Victoria L
authors.initials: VL
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Paul M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Cinciripini
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003463:Cues; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D012907:Smoking / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000523:psychology*; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*