An ERP Study About Inhibition Control Impairments In Adolescent Smokers From A Go/NoGo Task

Smoking is not just an individual problem but an important social problem. Especially in recent years, smoking behavior trend to take place in adolescents. The number of smoking adolescent is growth sharply. Smoking during this special period would be great harm to adolescents’ physical and mental. In addition to this smoking during adolescence may promote nicotine dependence later on in life. Therefore, it is extremely important to study the neural mechanisms of adolescent smokers. As inhibition control is emphasized in several contemporary theoretical models of addiction, in the current study, we focused on the electrophysiological evidence of inhibition control deficits in adolescent smokers. By using relatively homogenous groups of adolescent smokers(n=18) and matched nonsmokers(n=18), we employed event-related potentials(ERP) to investigate the N200 and P300 amplitude and latency differences during a Go/NoGo task between the adolescent smokers and nonsmokers. Relative to nonsmokers, more NoGo response errors, reduced NoGo P300 amplitude, and longer P300 latency were observed in adolescent smokers. Correlation analysis revealed that the NoGo P300 amplitudes were significantly correlated with NoGo errors in both adolescent smokers and nonsmokers. Our findings provided direct electrophysiological evidence for inhibitory control impairments in adolescent smokers. It is hoped that our results may enhance understanding of the pathology of inhibitory control in adolescent smokers.