This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Web of Science (11) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Franken, I. H.A. Articles by van den Brink, W. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Franken, I. H.A. Articles by van den Brink, W. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Two new neurophysiological indices of cocaine craving: evoked brain potentials and cue modulated startle reflex

Department of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam and Parnassia Addiction Research Centre, Den Haag, The Netherlands, franken{at}fsw.eur.nl

Kai P. Hulstijn

Parnassia Addiction Research Centre, Den Haag, The Netherlands

Cornelis J. Stam

Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Vincent M. Hendriks

Parnassia Addiction Research Centre, Den Haag, The Netherlands

Wim van den Brink

Amsterdam Institute for Addiction Research, Amsterdam and Department of Psychiatry, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Craving for cocaine is one of the hallmarks of cocaine dependence. One of the problems with craving is its measurement. Traditional psychophysiological indices such as skin conductance and heart rate have yielded contradictory results. These measures of craving were found to correlate only moderately with self-reported craving. In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and the cue modulated startle response (CMSR) are evaluated as indices for cocaine craving. Twenty-one abstinent cocaine-dependent subjects were divided into high and low cravers group based on the median split of self-reported craving scores. ERPs and CMSR were measured when subjects watched neutral, pleasant, unpleasant and cocaine-related pictures. Overall, it was found that cocaine-dependent subjects showed augmented slow-positive waves (SPWs) of the ERP on the cocaine pictures compared to neutral pictures. Only high cravers showed larger SPWs on the cocaine cues, suggesting an association between cue-elicited SPWs and self-reported cocaine craving. By contrast to the ERP measures, CMSR did not differentiate between cocaine pictures and neutral pictures. In addition, no differences between the low- and high cravers on the CMSR measure were found. The present results show that the evoked-potentials paradigm provides promising results to index cue-elicited craving. The use of startle modulation deserves further investigation.

Key Words: cocaine • craving • emotion • evoked potentials • motivation • startle reflex

Journal of Psychopharmacology, Vol. 18, No. 4, 544-552 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0269881104047282


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				D. I. Lubman, M. Yucel, J. W. L. Kettle, A. Scaffidi, T. MacKenzie, J. G. Simmons, and N. B. Allen Responsiveness to Drug Cues and Natural Rewards in Opiate Addiction: Associations With Later Heroin Use Arch Gen Psychiatry, February 1, 2009; 66(2): 205 - 212. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]