title: Eliciting nicotine craving with virtual smoking cues.
abstract: Craving is a strong desire to consume that emerges in every case of substance addiction. Previous studies have shown that eliciting craving with an exposure cues protocol can be a useful option for the treatment of nicotine dependence. Thus, the main goal of this study was to develop a virtual platform in order to induce craving in smokers. Fifty-five undergraduate students were randomly assigned to two different virtual environments: high arousal contextual cues and low arousal contextual cues scenarios (17 smokers with low nicotine dependency were excluded). An eye-tracker system was used to evaluate attention toward these cues. Eye fixation on smoking-related cues differed between smokers and nonsmokers, indicating that smokers focused more often on smoking-related cues than nonsmokers. Self-reports of craving are in agreement with these results and suggest a significant increase in craving after exposure to smoking cues. In sum, these data support the use of virtual environments for eliciting craving.
authors.affiliation: 1 School of Psychology and Life Sciences, Lusophone University of Humanities and Technologies , Lisbon, Portugal .
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gamito
authors.forename: Jorge
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Oliveira
authors.forename: André
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Baptista
authors.forename: Diogo
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Morais
authors.forename: Paulo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lopes
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rosa
authors.forename: Nuno
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.forename: Rodrigo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Brito
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009538:Nicotine / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology*; D013334:Students; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D009538:Nicotine