The Impulsivity And Intervention Study Of Treatment Seeking Drug Users

Objective:To explore impulsiveness of decision-making for risky gains and losses among treatment seeking drug users,and the effect of impulsive inhibition training on impulsive behavior and relapse tendency.Methods:32 male treatment seeking drug users and 31 healthy controls were engaged in experiment1.We evaluate decision-making for risky gains and losses separately at different expected value(EV),through comparing the performance of the treatment seeking drug users and the healthy controls on the decision-making task(Cups task).75 male treatment seeking drug users were divided into three groups,high-intensity group,low-intensity group and control group.High-intensity group and low-intensity group were training by impulsive inhibition training,and high-intensity group practiced three or four times a week and low-intensity group practiced once a week.Each group took eight training sessions.While the control group take no training sessions.The decision-making task was used on every group before and after the training,in order to compare the differences between three groups in different domains,different expected values of risky decision-making.The Implicit Association Test was used on every group before and after the training,in order to compare the differences in relapse tendency.Results:Results of experiment 1 showed that main effect of expected value level,F(2,122)=192.57,p<0.01,and a main effect of group,F(1,61)=96.32,p<0.01,indicating that the frequency of risky selection of treatment seeking drug users was significantly higher than that of healthy controls.We found an EV level × group interaction,F(2,104)=44.01,p<0.01,and simple effect analysis showed that the significant interaction was mainly due to more risk taking on RD and EQEV trails among drug rehabilitation personnel in comparison to healthy controls(p<0.01),while there is no difference in RA trails between treatment seeking drug users and healthy controls.Results of experiment 2 showed that a main effect of expected value level,F(2,91)=9.59,p<0.01,and a main effect of group,F(2,60)= 14.61,p<0.01.Post-hoc analyses showed that high-intensity group,low-intensity group were made less risky options than control group.The result of Implicit Association Test showed that high frequency training could reduce the relapse tendency(t=-2.92,p<0.01),while the low-frequency training group and the control group did not find the difference of the implicit relapse tendency.Conclusion:(1)The treatment seeking drug users make more risky choices than healthy controls on both gain and loss domain.The treatment seeking drug users make more risky choices than healthy controls on the situation of risk neutral and risk disadvantageous,rather than in the situation of risk advantageous.(2)Impulsive inhibition training can improve impulsive behavior in the decision-making of treatment seeking drug users,while high frequency impulsive inhibition training can reduce the implicit relapse tendency of treatment seeking drug users in withdrawal period.