Attention-biases and hot cognition in drug dependence

Trustees Of Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

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Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application requests five years of support to investigate attentional biases in drug dependent individuals (DDIs), how such biases are related to personality, and how contextual factors influence attentional biases in DDIs. This project applies (translates) basic cognitive science methods and theories of attention, perceptual processes, and learning to further our understanding of the clinical problem of drug dependence. Furthermore, this project seeks to understand and demonstrate the role for contextual factors (hot and cold processing) that may attentuate attentional biases and bolster self-control in DDIs. Knowledge of contextual factors that can bolster self-control would be valuable for prevention efforts in at-risk individuals and for the treatment of drug dependence. The first aim of this project is to test the hypothesis that DDIs preferentially attend to reward stimuli and that this attentional bias is specifically associated with the personality trait of impulsivity using cognitive science methods and sophisticated eye-gaze tracking instrumentation. Attentional bias will be assessed using visual attention deployment, similarity judgment, and task-shifting protocols, and quantified using traditional measures (e.g., reaction time, gaze time/preference) as well as parameters derived from computational models. Personality will be assessed in three dimensions related to drug abuse, impulsivity, harm avoidance, and excitement seeking. The project also aims to explore the association between drug dependence, harm avoidance, negative affect, and attention to aversive stimuli. The second aim is to test the hypotheses that increasing activation of the approach motivational system with a hot processing instructional set will amplify this attentional bias in DDIs and decreasing activation of the approach system (cool processing set) attenuates this attentional bias. The third aim is to develop more externally valid laboratory protocols for assessing the cognitive - motivational processes in DDI's. This involves developing and making available to the scientific community a well-characterized and normed set of images that can be used in standard cognitive protocols tapping attention, perceptual organization, decision making and associative/category learning. This project will provide valuable information about the role of attentional biases in drug dependence and how such biases can be manipulated to increase self-control in drug abusers. [unreadable] [unreadable]