Time Perception Of Drug-Related Cues And Negative Emotional Stimuli In Heroin Abstainers

Abstinence and relapse in drug addicts need to be explored by researchers.Drug addiction and relapse may be due to the distortion of duration perception.On the one hand,the abnormal time perception of drug addicts may be caused by pharmacological factors that damage their neurophysiological mechanisms related to time perception,on the other hand,it may be related to drug-related cues and negative emotional stimuli.Although the time perception of drug addicts has been explored in the past.However,time perception of heroin abusers is unclear,and how the time perception of heroin abstainers on drug-related cues and negative emotional stimuli exists is not well understood.Therefore,this study aims to explore this issue through two experiments.In Experiment 1,32 heroin abstainers and 32 control subjects were selected to explore the characteristics of time perception of heroin abstainers using temporal bisection task and seven durations.The results showed that heroin abstinents tended to overestimate the middle durations,which indicated that the time perception of heroin abstainers was abnormal.And this kind of anomaly is more reflected in the judgment of the middle durations.In experiment 2,32 heroin abstainers and 34 control subjects were selected to study the time perception of drug-related cues and negative emotional stimuli using temporal bisection task and seven durations.The results showed that heroin abstainers underestimated the time perception of long-term drug-related cues and overestimated the time perception of negative emotional stimuli.The results showed that heroin abstainers perceived the time perception of long-term drug-related cues more quickly,and perceived the time perception of negative emotional stimuli more slowly.The results of this study suggest that time perception disorder may be an important cause of addiction and relapse in heroin abstainers,and drug-related cues and negative emotional stimuli may be the key factors affecting time perception disorder in heroin abstainers.Therefore,Future research should pay more attention to the role of time factor in addiction and relapse and consider the effects of drug-related cues and negative emotional stimuli on relapse in drug control practices.