The late positive potential (LPP) in response to varying types of emotional and cigarette stimuli in smokers: a content comparison. Int J Psychophysiol 2013 Jul;89(1):18-25
Date
05/07/2013Pubmed ID
23643564Pubmed Central ID
PMC3771859DOI
10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.04.019Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84880487497 35 CitationsAbstract
Identifying neural mechanisms associated with addiction has substantially improved the overall understanding of addictive processes. Indeed, research suggests that drug-associated cues may take advantage of neural mechanisms originally intended for emotional processing of stimuli relevant to survival. In this study, we investigated cortical responses to several categories of emotional cues (erotic, romance, pleasant objects, mutilation, sadness, and unpleasant objects) as well as two types of smoking-related cues (people smoking and cigarette-related objects). We recorded ERPs from 180 smokers prior to their participation in a smoking cessation clinical trial and assessed emotional salience by measuring the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP; 400 to 600 ms after picture onset). As expected, emotional and cigarette-related pictures prompted a significantly larger LPP than neutral pictures. The amplitude of the LPP increased as a function of picture arousal level, with high-arousing erotic and mutilation pictures showing the largest response in contrast to low-arousing pleasant and unpleasant objects, which showed the smallest response (other than neutral). Compared to females, male participants showed larger LPPs for high-arousing erotic and mutilation pictures. However, unlike emotional pictures, no difference was noted for the LPP between cigarette stimuli containing people versus those containing only objects, suggesting that in contrast to emotional objects, cigarette-related objects are highly relevant for smokers. We also compared the smokers to a small (N=40), convenience sample of never-smokers. We found that never-smokers had significantly smaller LPPs in response to erotic and cigarette stimuli containing only objects compared to smokers.
Author List
Minnix JA, Versace F, Robinson JD, Lam CY, Engelmann JM, Cui Y, Brown VL, Cinciripini PMMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdolescentAdult
African Americans
Aged
Cues
Data Interpretation, Statistical
Double-Blind Method
Electroencephalography
Emotions
Erotica
Evoked Potentials
Female
Grief
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Neuropsychological Tests
Photic Stimulation
Sex Characteristics
Smoking
Tobacco Use Disorder
Young Adult
