The Role of Executive Functions in Cocaine Abuse

描述：（申请人提供） 滥用可卡因仍然是一个重大的医疗和社会问题， 美国和其他地方。尽管越来越多的知识的药理基础， 可卡因的影响以及吸毒的环境和社会经济因素 在滥用方面，相对较少关注认知因素， 与成瘾有关。有人提出，一个实质性的认知 人类成瘾的一个组成部分是一种失控的执行障碍，即 无法控制自己的行为，因为有强烈的动机， 吸毒。据推测，这些执行过程受到损害， 在可卡因使用者中，这有助于继续吸毒习惯， 可卡因给药后也严重受损，这有助于 一个特定的药物狂欢的持续时间。为了解决这些问题，一系列 建议进行研究，以审查行政控制的这些方面， 这些行为被认为与药物成瘾最密切相关， 选择性地隔离感兴趣的执行功能，以尽量减少 非执行过程对任务绩效的贡献。以及 除了解决基本的认知现象外，这些研究还将解决 这些（dys）功能的神经解剖学基板使用功能性MRI。 这项研究的目的包括确定可卡因使用者是否在 相对于未使用过药物的对照组和可卡因， 使用者在可卡因给药后相对于他们的 自己的底线。行政控制的各个方面将包括以下能力： 将焦点注意力从一个思想项目（即，当前活动 （B）对另一个项目行使控制 强烈的优势欲望;（c）保持内在驱动的注意力。一 进一步的目的是了解发生在大脑中的神经生物学变化。 自动性的发作以及这与药物成瘾的关系。基于习惯 行为可以被描述为执行控制的丧失， 变得自动化并受到外部线索的控制。神经解剖学 这种从受控行为到自动行为的转变，以及它在 药物成瘾的发病还没有得到很好的理解， 吸毒往往演变成习惯性行为，吸毒者可能 感觉和表现出无力感。建议对基本机制进行表征 并评估可卡因使用者重新建立 对自动化过程的执行控制。

DESCRIPTION: (provided by applicant) Cocaine abuse continues to be a substantial medical and social problem in the USA and elsewhere. Despite increasing knowledge of the pharmacological basis of cocaine's effects and of the environmental and socioeconomic factors in drug abuse, relatively little attention has been given to the cognitive factors that are involved in addiction. It is proposed that a substantial cognitive component of human addiction is a dysexecutive loss of control, that is, an inability to control one's own behavior in light of the strong motivation to consume drug. It is hypothesized that these executive processes are compromised in cocaine users which facilitates the continuation of the drug habit and are also compromised acutely following cocaine administration, which facilitates the duration of a particular drug binge. To address these issues, a series of studies are proposed that will examine those aspects of the executive control of behavior that are considered most germane to drug addiction using tasks that selectively isolate the executive function of interest to minimize the contribution of non-executive processes to task performance. As well as addressing the basic cognitive phenomena, these studies will also address the neuroanatomical substrates of these (dys)functions using functional MRI. Aims of this research include determining if cocaine users are impaired in executive control of behavior relative to drug-naive controls and if cocaine users are acutely impaired following a cocaine administration relative to their own baseline. Aspects of executive control will include the ability to (a) switch focal attention from one item of thought (i.e., a currently active working memory representation) to another item; (b) exercise control over strong prepotent urges; and (c) maintain endogenously driven attention. A further aim is to understand the neurobiological changes that occur in the onset of automaticity and how this may relate to drug addiction. Habit based behavior can be described as the loss of executive control as certain behaviors become automatized and fall under exogenously cued control. The neuroanatomy of this transition from controlled to automatic behavior and how it features in the onset of drug addiction is not well understood and has implications for how drug use tends to evolve into habitual behavior over which the drug user may feel and appear powerless. It is proposed to characterize the basic mechanisms of this transition and to assess the cocaine user's ability to re-establish executive control over what have become automatic processes.