The Effect Of Emotional Dimension And Content On Attentional Blink In Compulsory Drug Addicts

Drug abuse is a chronic and repetitive disorder,and the prevention of relapse after withdrawal remains a key issue in the treatment process.Among them,attentional bias to drug-related cues is a post-addiction manifestation and also a key predictor of relapse.Second,drug addicts tend to have negative affective disorders,and in order to reduce negative emotions,they engage in more frequent drug use,and drug use and withdrawal reactions further increase negative emotions,a "vicious circle" that contributes to high relapse rates(Stewart & Conrod,2008).In contrast to research paradigms that focus on exogenous spatial cues(e.g.,visual search,spatial cues,point detection),attentional transient tasks have the advantage of probing the temporal dynamics of attention and are more sensitive to the temporal dimension,and attentional bias is considered a core cognitive feature of substance addiction(Mirtorabi,Saleki,Rahmanian,Hadizadeh,& Yoonessi,2021;Sigurjonsdottir,2015;Waters & Feyerabend,2000;Waters et al.)Starting with attentional bias,a key predictor of relapse in withdrawn individuals,the present study designed three successive experiments to explore the attentional transient behavior and EEG characteristics of drug addicts in withdrawal to different emotional dimensions with drug-related cues using a rapid visual sequence presentation paradigm.Experiment 1 used a mixed experimental design of 2(T2 general emotion picture validity: positive,negative)× 2(T2 general emotion picture arousal: high arousal,low arousal)× 2(Lag: Lag2,Lag8)× 2(group: compulsory abstinence group,control group)to explore the characteristics of attentional transient behavior of drug addicts in withdrawal to different emotion dimensions.The results revealed that(1)the performance of the compulsory abstinence group was significantly worse than that of the control group;(2)the performance during the attentional transient period(Lag2)was significantly worse than that outside the attentional transient period(Lag8);(3)both the compulsory abstinence group and the control group showed that negative emotional stimuli captured attention more easily and played a counteracting role to the attentional transient effect;(4)under positive emotional stimuli,high arousal stimuli played a counteracting role to the attentional transient in the compulsory abstinence group.(4)With positive emotional stimuli,high arousal stimuli counteracted the attentional transient effect in the compulsory abstinence group.Experiment 2,based on the findings of Experiment 1,used a mixed experimental design of 4(T2 types: positive,negative,neutral,and correlated)× 2(Lag: Lag2,Lag8)× 2(groups: strong abstinence group,control group)to explore the characteristics of attentional transient behavior of drug addicts to different emotional contents during withdrawal.The results revealed that(1)the performance of the compulsory abstinence group was significantly worse than that of the control group;(2)the performance during the attentional transient period(Lag2)was significantly worse than that outside the attentional transient period(Lag8);(3)compared to drug addiction-related stimuli,the attentional transient effect was enhanced in the compulsory abstinence group when T2 was a positive stimulus and weakened in the strong withdrawal and control groups when T2 was a negative stimulus.Based on the findings of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2,Experiment 3 used a mixed experimental design of 2(T2 drug use related picture validity: positive,negative)× 2(T2 drug use related picture arousal degree: high arousal,low arousal)×2(Lag: Lag2,Lag8)× 2(group: strong abstinence group,control group)to explore the attentional transient behavior and EEG characteristics of abstainers for different drug use related emotional dimensions.The results revealed that(1)performance during the attentional transient period(Lag2)was significantly worse than outside the attentional transient period(Lag8);(2)under low arousal drug-related stimuli,positive stimuli exerted a counteracting effect on the attentional transient compared to negative stimuli;(3)compared to low arousal drug-related stimuli,high arousal drug-related stimuli exerted a counteracting effect on the attentional transient in the strong abstinence group;(3)negative high arousal drug use related stimuli induced greater P3 mean wave amplitude than negative low arousal stimuli in the Lag8condition;(4)control group induced greater N2 wave amplitude than the strong abstinence group;(5)negative drug use related stimuli induced greater N2 wave amplitude than positive drug use related stimuli.The results of the three experiments showed that the potency and arousal of both the general mood pictures and the drug-related mood pictures had a joint effect on the attentional transient antagonism effect,with the general mood pictures showing a processing advantage for negative stimuli and high arousal,and the drug-related mood pictures showing a positive low arousal drug-related stimulus producing an attentional transient antagonism effect on the compulsory abstinence group;the compulsory abstinence group performed worse than the control group overall,indicating that the past Substance dependence produced impairment of attentional function;dominant processing effects of negative and high arousal stimuli were found in the early attentional stage represented by N2 and the central processing stage represented by P3;the strong abstinence group outperformed high correlated drug-related stimuli for negative stimuli,indicating that negative stimuli still dominate in attentional selection and processing.