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Dopamine, urges to smoke, and the relative salience of drug versus non-drug reward

Freeman, TP; Das, RK; Kamboj, SK; Curran, HV; (2015) Dopamine, urges to smoke, and the relative salience of drug versus non-drug reward. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 10 (1) pp. 85-92. 10.1093/scan/nsu026. Green open access

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Abstract

When addicted individuals are exposed to drug-related stimuli, dopamine release is thought to mediate incentive salience attribution, increasing attentional bias, craving and drug seeking. It is unclear whether dopamine acts specifically on drug cues versus other rewards, and if these effects correspond with craving and other forms of cognitive bias. Here, we administered the dopamine D 2 /D 3 agonist pramipexole (0.5 mg) to 16 tobacco smokers in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design. Visual fixations on smoking and money images were recorded alongside smoking urges and fluency tasks. Pramipexole attenuated a marked bias in initial orienting towards smoking relative to money but did not alter a maintained attentional bias towards smoking. Pramipexole decreased urges to smoke retrospectively after the task but not on a state scale. Fewer smoking words were generated after pramipexole but phonological and semantic fluency were preserved. Although these treatment effects did not correlate with each other, changes in initial orienting towards smoking and money were inversely related to baseline scores. In conclusion, pramipexole can reduce the salience of an addictive drug compared with other rewards and elicit corresponding changes in smoking urges and cognitive bias. These reward-specific and baseline-dependent effects support an ‘inverted-U’ shaped profile of dopamine in addiction.

Type: Article
Title: Dopamine, urges to smoke, and the relative salience of drug versus non-drug reward
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsu026
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsu026
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
Keywords: Science & Technology, Social Sciences, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Neurosciences, Psychology, Psychology, Experimental, Neurosciences & Neurology, incentive salience, reward, dopamine, craving, attentional bias, RELAPSE FOLLOWING TREATMENT, ATTENTIONAL BIAS, NICOTINE DEPENDENCE, HEALTHY-VOLUNTEERS, CIGARETTE-SMOKING, NATURAL REWARDS, FAGERSTROM TEST, EYE-MOVEMENTS, CUES, ADDICTION
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1422227
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