Alcohol-Attentional Bias in Alcohol-Dependent and Cocaine-Dependent Patients - Abstract
Background: Substance-related attentional bias refers to the reactivity to substance-related cues. This attentional bias to drugs has been examined in different addictive disorders such as cocaine, alcohol or tobacco dependence. There is extensive evidence regarding the attentional bias to alcohol-related cues in Alcohol Dependent (AD) patients. Furthermore, there is evidence regarding the higher attention bias to cocaine-related cues in Cocaine Dependent (CD) subjects after the exposure to alcohol consumption. However, there are still no data on the potential attentional bias to alcohol-related cues in patients diagnosed with CD.
Objectives: we aimed to assess attentional bias in a sample of alcohol and cocaine users with a visual probe task.
Material and methods: We used a sample of 35 AD patients, 30 CD patients and a control group formed by 35 healthy volunteers. Moreover, and to further study alcohol attentional bias in CD subjects, we divided this group in terms of their history of alcohol consumption. All subjects were examined using the visual probe task, in order to study the attentional bias to alcohol-related cues.
Results: The patients that showed the greater attentional bias to alcohol-related cues were the AD subjects, followed by the CD patients and finally by controls. AD and CD exhibited lower reaction times to alcohol- congruent condition compared to the alcohol-incongruent, whereas in controls the opposite effect was found.
Discussion: Our results indicated that although attentional bias to alcohol-related cues was clearly found in AD and CD patients, these data are in accordance with the hypothesis about the fact that cocaine dependence increases the attentional bias to other drugs, such as alcohol.