Motoric stopping as an intervention to reduce the value of rewarding stimuli

描述（由申请人提供）：药物相关刺激的高估是药物滥用的核心心理成分。改变这些评估模式是针对药物滥用的认知行为干预的关键。然而，这些专注于刺激货币贬值的干预措施收效甚微，这或许是因为没有建立起明确的机制来可靠地导致刺激货币贬值。我们的初步数据表明，停止对奖励刺激的运动动作会导致刺激估值的降低。在这里，我们将研究这种令人信服的效应背后的机制，我们还将研究戒烟相关的贬值是否会降低吸烟者对尼古丁的渴望。为了研究潜在的机制，我们将在控制条件下进行行为实验，以检验这种效果是由于停止本身，还是由于其他因素，如分心和努力。我们假设贬值效应是特定于停止动作的，因此在控制实验中不应该发现贬值。我们进一步假设，停止行动影响贬值的方式是通过停止引起的全球抑制。我们将通过使用经颅磁刺激来测量当参与者停止他们的动作时任务无关运动效应的抑制，从而索引全局抑制。我们假设，当人们停止时，全球抑制的数量将与刺激贬值的数量相对应。最后，我们将进行一项行为实验，以确定这种戒烟模式是否可以用来减少重度吸烟者的吸烟冲动。总的来说，这个项目可以帮助确定戒烟导致贬值的确切心理机制，它可以为吸烟者提供这种行为干预效果的概念验证数据。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over-valuation of drug-associated stimuli is a central psychological component of substance abuse. Changing these valuation patterns is key for cognitive-behavioral interventions targeted at treating drug abuse. Yet, such interventions focused on stimulus-devaluation have shown limited success, perhaps because no clear-cut mechanism has been established that reliably leads to stimulus devaluation. Our preliminary data show that stopping motor actions towards rewarding stimuli leads to a reduction in stimulus valuation. Here we will investigate the mechanisms underlying this compelling effect and we will also examine if stopping-related devaluation decreases nicotine urges in smokers. To investigate the underlying mechanisms we will perform behavioral experiments with control conditions to examine if the effect is due to stopping per se, or to other factors such as distraction and effort. We hypothesize that the devaluation effects are specific to stopping action, so no devaluation should be found in the control experiments. We further suppose that the way in which stopping action affects devaluation is by means of stopping-induced global suppression. We will index global suppression by using transcranial magnetic stimulation to measure the suppression of task-irrelevant motor effectors when participants stop their action. We hypothesize that the amount of global suppression that occurs when people stop will correspond with the amount of stimulus devaluation that occurs. Finally, we will run a behavioral experiment to determine if this stopping paradigm can be leveraged to try to reduce smoking urges in heavy smokers. Overall, this project could help to determine the exact psychological mechanism underlying stopping-induced devaluation and it could provide proof-of-concept data in smokers of the efficacy of this behavioral intervention.