title: Neurocognitive rehabilitation for addiction medicine: From neurophysiological markers to cognitive rehabilitation and relapse prevention.
abstract: Currently, relapse prevention remains the main challenge in addiction medicine, indicating that the established treatment methods combining psychotherapy with neuropharmacological interventions are not entirely effective. Therefore, there is a push to develop alternatives to psychotherapy- and medication-based approaches to addiction treatment. Two major cognitive factors have been identified that trigger relapse in addicted patients: attentional biases directed toward drug-related cues, which increase the urge to consume, and impaired response inhibition toward these cues, which makes it more difficult for addicted people to resist temptation. Recent studies on newly detoxified alcoholic patients have shown that by using the appropriate tasks to index these cognitive functions with event-related potentials (ERPs), it is possible to discriminate between future relapsers and nonrelapsers. These preliminary data suggest that the ERP technique has great clinical potential for preventing relapse in alcohol-dependent patients, as well as for addictive states in general. Indeed, ERPs may help to identify patients highly vulnerable to relapse and allow the development of individually adapted cognitive rehabilitation programs. The implementation of this combined approach requires an intense collaboration between psychiatry departments, clinical neurophysiology laboratories, and neuropsychological rehabilitation centers. The potential pitfalls and limitations of this approach are also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Psychologie Médicale et d'Addictologie, ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI), CHU Brugmann-Université Libre de Bruxelles (U.L.B.), Brussels, Belgium. Electronic address: salvatore.campanella@chu-brugmann.be.
authors.forename: Salvatore
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Campanella
mesh_terms: D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D009482:Neurophysiology; D012008:Recurrence; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000534:rehabilitation
keywords: Addiction; Cognitive rehabilitation; Event-related potentials; Relapse; Substance use disorders