Abnormal Resting State Patterns And Cognitive Control In Young Smokers

Tobacco use during later adolescence and young adulthood may cause serious neurophysiological changes; rationally, it is extremely important to study the relationship between brain dysfunction and behavioral performances in young adult smokers. Previous resting state studies have investigated the changes on intra-regional and inter-regional levels in smoking. Unfortunately, few studies focused on spontaneous activity differences on both intra-regional and inter-regional levels to investigate the relationship between the resting state abnormalities and behavioral deficits in young adult smokers.In the present study, we used fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuation(f ALFF) and resting state functional connectivity(RSFC) to investigate the resting state spontaneous activity differences between young adult smokers and nonsmokers. Correlation analysis was carried out to assess the relationship between the neuroimaging findings and the clinical information(pack-years, cigarette dependence,age of onset and craving score) as well as cognitive control deficits measured by the Stroop task performances.Consistent with previous addiction findings, our results revealed the resting state abnormalities within frontostriatal circuits, i.e. enhanced spontaneous activity of caudate and reduced functional strength between caudate and anterior cingulate cortex(ACC) in young adult smokers. Moreover, the f ALFF values of the caudate were correlated with the craving and RSFC strength between caudate and ACC was associated with the cognitive control impairments in young adult smokers. Our findings could lead to a better understanding of intrinsic functional architecture of baseline brain activity in young smokers, by providing regional and brain circuit spontaneous neuronal activity properties as well as their association with the cognitive control impairments.