The Role of Executive Functions in Cocaine Abuse

描述：(申请人提供) 可卡因滥用仍然是一个重大的医疗和社会问题。 美国和其他地方。尽管人们对其药理基础的了解越来越多 可卡因的影响以及毒品中的环境和社会经济因素 虐待，相对较少的关注认知因素， 都与毒瘾有关。有人提出，一个实质性的认知 人类成瘾的组成部分是一种难以执行的失控，即一种 不能根据强烈的动机来控制自己的行为 吸食毒品。据推测，这些执行过程受到了损害 在吸食可卡因的人中，这有助于继续吸毒习惯，并且是 在服用可卡因后也严重受损，这有助于 某一特定毒品狂欢的持续时间。为了解决这些问题，一系列 建议进行的研究将考察行政控制的这些方面。 被认为与吸毒成瘾关系最密切的行为，使用 有选择地隔离感兴趣的执行功能，以将 非执行过程对任务绩效的贡献。以及 解决基本的认知现象，这些研究也将解决 使用功能磁共振成像了解这些(Dys)功能的神经解剖学基础。 这项研究的目的包括确定可卡因使用者是否在 与药物幼稚控制和可卡因有关的行为的执行控制 吸毒者在服用可卡因后受到严重损害，与他们的 自己的底线。行政控制的各个方面将包括：(A) 将焦点从一项想法(即，当前正在进行的 工作记忆表征)到另一项；(B)对 强烈的强势冲动；以及(C)保持内源性的注意力。一个 进一步的目标是了解在脑血管疾病中发生的神经生物学变化 自律性的开始，以及这可能与药物成瘾有何关系。基于习惯 行为可以被描述为失去执行控制作为特定的行为 变得自动化，落在外在暗示的控制之下。人的神经解剖学 这种从受控行为到自动行为的转变以及它在 吸毒成瘾的起因还不是很清楚，它的含义是 吸毒倾向于演变为习惯行为，吸毒者可能会对此 感觉到并显得无能为力。建议对基本机制进行描述 并评估可卡因使用者重新建立 对已经成为自动流程的东西进行行政控制。

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.