Brief ReportImpaired Prefrontal Cortical Function and Disrupted Adaptive Cognitive Control in Methamphetamine Abusers: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study
Section snippets
Subjects
Two groups were studied: 12 MA abusing subjects and 16 age-matched non-substance-abusing control subjects. The MA abusers met DSM-IV criteria for lifetime MA dependence determined from the Structured Clinical Interview (SCID) (19) but were currently drug abstinent a minimum of 3 weeks (see Table 1).
Procedure
A single-trial Stroop task was administered during the scanning session that employed both Incongruent (conflict) and Congruent (nonconflict) trials (see Supplement 1 for detailed task description).
Reaction Time Analyses
Analyses revealed main effects of Stroop wordtype [F(1,26) = 65.09, p < .001] as well as an interaction between group, trial-to-trial adjustment and wordtype [F(1,26) = 4.04, p = .05]. Analyses revealed that the trial-to-trial adjustment RT effect (cI-iI) differed significantly between the MA abusers and controls [F(1,26) = 6.54; p =.04, Bonferroni corrected for multiple comparisons). Whereas the control subjects showed an RT advantage (13 msec benefit) to conflict trials that were preceded by
Discussion
Reduced right PFC activation, most notably in the right midfrontal cortex (BA6), was observed in MA abusers compared with non-substance-abusing control subjects when contrasting conditions that measured how prior exposure to conflict modulated subsequent behavior. In contrast, no significant group differences were observed in conflict-related activation in the ACC (17, 18, 21). These data provide preliminary evidence that MA abuse is associated with deficits in behavioral regulation associated
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