Hostname: page-component-599cfd5f84-2stsh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-07T06:46:36.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Attentional bias to incentive stimuli in frequent ketamine users

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2008

C. J. A. Morgan ,
H. Rees  and
H. V. Curran
C. J. A. Morgan*
Affiliation:
Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, University College London, London, UK
H. Rees
Affiliation:
Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, University College London, London, UK
H. V. Curran
Affiliation:
Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, University College London, London, UK
*
*Address for correspondence: C. J. A. Morgan, Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

The attention-grabbing properties of drugs to drug-using individuals have been well documented and recent research has begun to suggest that such attentional bias may be related to the severity of drug dependency. Dependence on ketamine has been reported anecdotally but no systematic study has investigated this phenomenon. We aimed to explore attentional biases to incentive stimuli in different populations of ketamine users.

Method

Using a dot-probe paradigm, attentional bias to both drug-related and money-related stimuli was investigated in 150 participants: 30 frequent ketamine users, 30 infrequent ketamine users, 30 ex-ketamine users, 30 poly-drug users and 30 non-drug-using controls. Two stimulus presentation times were used (200 and 2000 ms) to investigate whether attentional bias was as a result of an automatic or a more conscious attentional shift. Participants also rated the degree to which stimuli used in the dot-probe paradigm were pleasurable.

Results

Frequent ketamine users demonstrated an attentional bias to both types of incentive stimuli only at the short stimulus presentation interval and this was significantly correlated with degree of ketamine use. No attentional biases were observed in any of the other groups. All groups rated money stimuli as more pleasurable than neutral stimuli.

Conclusions

These data support incentive models of drug use and demonstrate the ability of the attentional bias paradigm to discriminate recreational drug users from those with more dependent patterns of use. Ketamine is a potentially dependence-forming drug.

Keywords

Addictionattentional biasdependencedrug abuseketamine
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 38 , Issue 9 , September 2008 , pp. 1331 - 1340
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (2006). An unhappy new year for drug dealers (http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/news-and-publications/news/unhappy-drug-dealers).Google Scholar
Ahmed, SN, Petchovsky, L (1980). Abuse of ketamine. British Journal of Psychiatry 137, 303b.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Allport, A (1989). Visual attention. In Foundations of Cognitive Science (ed. Posner, M. I.), pp. 631–682. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baddeley, A, Emslie, H, Nimmo-Smith, I (1993). The spot the word test: a robust estimate of verbal intelligence based on lexical decision. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 32, 55–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechara, A, Dolan, S, Hindes, A (2002). Decision-making and addiction. Part II. Myopia for the future or hypersensitivity to reward? Neuropsychologia 40, 1690–1705.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bradley, B, Field, M, Mogg, K, De Houwer, J (2004). Attentional and evaluative biases for smoking cues in nicotine dependence: component processes of biases in visual orienting. Behavioural Pharmacology 15, 29–36.Google Scholar
Bush, B, Shaw, S, Cleary, P, Delbanco, T, Aronson, MD (1987). Screening for alcohol abuse using the CAGE questionnaire. American Journal of Medicine 82, 231–235.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cox, WM, Hogan, LM, Kristian, MR, Race, JH (2002). Alcohol attentional bias as a predictor of alcohol abusers' treatment outcome. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 68, 237–243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ehrman, RN, Robbins, SJ, Bromwell, MA, Lankford, ME, Monterosso, JR, O'Brien, CP (2002). Comparing attentional bias to smoking cues in current smokers, former smokers, and non-smokers using a dot-probe task. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 67, 185–191.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Franken, IH (2003). Drug craving and addiction: integrating psychological and neuropsychopharmacological approaches. Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry 27, 563–579.Google Scholar
Franken, IH, Hendriks, VM, Stam, CJ, van den Brink, W (2004). A role for dopamine in the processing of drug cues in heroin dependent patients. European Neuropsychopharmacology 14, 503–508.Google Scholar
Goldstein, RZ, Volkow, ND (2002). Drug addiction and its underlying neurobiological basis: neuroimaging evidence for the involvement of the frontal cortex. American Journal of Psychiatry 159, 1642–1652.Google Scholar
Hurt, PH, Ritchie, EC (1994). A case of ketamine dependence [Letter]. American Journal of Psychiatry 151, 779.Google ScholarPubMed
Jansen, KLR (1990). Ketamine: can chronic use impair memory? International Journal of Addictions 25, 133–139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kamaya, H, Krishna, PR (1987). Ketamine addiction [Letter]. Anaesthesia 67, 861–862.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kegeles, LS, Martinez, D, Kochan, LD, Hwang, DR, Huang, Y, Mawlawi, O, Suckow, RF, Van-Heertum, RL, Laurelle, M (2002). NMDA antagonist effects on striatal dopamine release: positron emission tomography studies in humans. Synapse 43, 19–29.Google Scholar
Krystal, JH, Karper, LP, Seibyl, JP, Freeman, GK, Delaney, R, Bremner, JD, Heninger, GR, Bowers, MB, Charney, DS (1994). Subanesthetic effects of the non-competitive NMDA-antagonist, ketamine, in humans. Archives of General Psychiatry 51, 199–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krystal, JH, Petrakis, IL, Webb, E, Cooney, NL, Karper, LP, Namanworth, S, Stetson, P, Trevisan, LA, Charney, DS (1998). Dose-related ethanol-like effects of the NMDA antagonist, ketamine, in recently detoxified alcoholics. Archives of General Psychiatry 55, 354–360.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Layer, RT, Kaddis, FG, Wallace, L (1993). The NMDA-receptor antagonist MK-801 elicits conditioned place preference in rats. Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behaviour 44, 245–247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lilly, J (1978). The Scientist: A Novel Autobiography. JB Lippincott: New York.Google Scholar
Lim, DK (2003). Ketamine associated psychedelic effects and dependence. Singapore Medical Journal 44, 31–34.Google Scholar
Lubman, DI, Peters, LA, Mogg, K, Bradley, BP, Deakin, JF (2000). Attentional bias for drug cues in opiate dependence. Psychological Medicine 30, 169–175.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marissen, MA, Franken, IH, Waters, AJ, Blanken, P, van den Brink, W, Hendriks, VM (2006). Attentional bias predicts heroin relapse following treatment. Addiction 101, 1306–1312.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marquis, KL, Webb, MG, Moreton, JE (1989). Effects of fixed ratio size and dose on phencyclidine self-administration by rats. Psychopharmacology 97, 179–182.Google Scholar
McCambridge, J, Winstock, A, Hunt, N (2007). 5-Year trends in use of hallucinogens and other adjunct drugs amongst UK dance drug users. European Addiction Research 13, 57–64.Google Scholar
Mixmag drugs survey (2006). ‘Drug Britain: a nation of caners–what state are you in?’ In Mixmag, pp. 33–53.Google Scholar
Mogg, K, Bradley, BP, Hyare, H, Lee, S (1998). Selective attention to food-related stimuli in hunger: are attentional biases specific to emotional and psychopathological states, or are they also found in normal drive states? Behaviour Research and Therapy 36, 227–237.Google Scholar
Moore, NN, Bostwick, JM (1999). Ketamine dependence in anesthesia providers. Psychosomatics 40, 356–359.Google Scholar
Morgan, CJA, Mofeez, A, Brandner, B, Bromley, L, Curran, HV (2004). Ketamine impairs response inhibition and is positively reinforcing in healthy volunteers: a dose response study. Psychopharmacology 172, 298–308.Google ScholarPubMed
Munafo, M, Mogg, K, Roberts, S, Bradley, BP, Murphy, M (2003). Selective processing of smoking related cues in current smokers, ex-smokers and never-smokers on the modified Stroop task. Journal of Psychopharmacology 17, 311–317.Google Scholar
Nutt, D, Lingford-Hughes, A, Daglish, M (2003). Future directions in substance dependence research. Journal of Neural Transmission 64 (Suppl.), 95–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pal, HR, Berry, N, Kumar, R, Ray, R (2002). Ketamine dependence. Anaesthesia and Intensive Care 30, 382–384.Google Scholar
Placanica, JL, Faunce, GJ, Soames Job, RF (2002). The effect of fasting on attentional biases for food and body shape/weight words in high and low Eating Disorder Inventory scorers. International Journal of Eating Disorders 32, 79–90.Google Scholar
Robinson, TE, Berridge, KC (1993). The neural basis of drug craving: an incentive sensitization theory of addiction. Brain Research Reviews 18, 247–291.Google Scholar
Robinson, TE, Berridge, KC (2003). Addiction. Annual Reviews in Psychology 54, 25–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Solowij, N, Hall, W, Lee, N (1992). Recreational MDMA use in Sydney: a profile of ‘Ecstasy’ users and their experience with the drug. British Journal of Addiction 87, 1161–1172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soyka, M, Krupinski, G, Volki, G (1993). Phenomenology of ketamine induced psychosis. Sucht 5, 327–331.Google Scholar
Sputz, R (1989). I never met a reality I didn't like: a report on ‘vitamin K’. In High Times, October 1989 (ed. Anonymous), pp. 64–82. High Times: New York.Google Scholar
Stetter, F, Ackermann, K, Bizer, A, Straube, ER, Mann, K (1995). Effects of disease-related cues in alcoholic inpatients: results of a controlled ‘alcohol Stroop’ study. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 19, 593–599.Google Scholar
Tiffany, ST (1990). A cognitive model of drug-urges and drug-use behaviour: role of automatic and non-automatic processes. Psychological Review 97, 147–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Townshend, JM, Duka, T (2001). Attentional bias associated with alcohol cues: differences between heavy and occasional social drinkers. Psychopharmacology 157, 67–74.Google ScholarPubMed
Turner, DM (1994). The Essential Guide to Psychedelics. Panther Press: San Francisco.Google Scholar
Vadhan, NP, Carpenter, KM, Copersino, ML, Hart, CL, Foltin, RW, Nunes, EV (2007). Attentional bias towards cocaine-related stimuli: relationship to treatment-seeking for cocaine dependence. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 33, 727–736.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Washton, AM, Stone-Washton, N (1993). Out-patient treatment of cocaine and crack addiction: a clinical perspective. NIDA Research Monographs 135, 15–30.Google Scholar
Weinstein, A, Cox, WM (2006). Cognitive processing of drug-related stimuli: the role of memory and attention. Journal of Psychopharmacology 20, 850–859.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Winger, G, Palmer, RK, Woods, J-H (1989). Drug-reinforced responding: rapid determination of dose-response functions. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 24, 135–142.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yeomans, MR, Javaherian, S, Tovey, HM, Stafford, LD (2005). Attentional bias for caffeine-related stimuli in high but not moderate or non-caffeine consumers. Psychopharmacology 181, 477–485.Google Scholar