Abstract
Rationale
Drug-related cues can elicit approach responses in drug users. However, no relevant research has ever concerned heroin abusers. In the present study, we investigated whether the abstinent heroin abusers demonstrated special behavioural tendencies to approach or avoid the drug-related stimuli compared with neutral stimuli.
Method
Twenty-two male abstinent heroin abusers (AH) and 20 healthy males (NC) were tested by a Pull/Push Task. Participants pulled (approach response) or pushed (avoidance response) a lever in response to the content of stimulus pictures (i.e. heroin-related versus neutral). The approach and avoidance scores were therefore calculated based on response times and directions to reflect their behavioural tendencies.
Results and conclusion
Relative to the NC individuals, the AH individuals demonstrated significantly heightened tendencies to approach (“pull”) the heroin-related stimuli in comparison with the neutral stimuli, while their tendencies to avoid (“push”) the heroin-related stimuli were marginally blunted, reflecting a special bias for AH individuals to behaviourally approach, and simultaneously resist to avoid, heroin-related cues.
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Notes
It was extremely difficult to find an AH group without any drinking or smoking history. Hence the majority of the AH participants in the present study were smokers and abstinent drinkers (inpatients in the rehabilitation centre have no access to drugs as well as alcohol). None of them were reported heavy drinkers or smokers.
The PPT used here did not entail the “zooming feature” to enhance participants' sensation of approach or avoidance.
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Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the “Key Project of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education, China” (No. 07JZD0029), the “Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China” awarded to Mowei Shen and the “Chinese National Social Science Foundation” (11BSH047) awarded to Feng Zhang. The funding resources had no involvement in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript or the decision to submit the paper for publication. All authors declare that they have no financial or personal conflicts of interest.
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Zhou, Y., Li, X., Zhang, M. et al. Behavioural approach tendencies to heroin-related stimuli in abstinent heroin abusers. Psychopharmacology 221, 171–176 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-011-2557-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-011-2557-0