Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Agustina Aragón Daud | Email: agus.aragondaud@gmail.com
Agustina Aragón-Daud 1°, Sofia Milagros Oberti de Luca 1°, Sofia Schurmann Vignaga 2°, Pilar Prado 1°, Rosario Figueras 1°, Lucia Lizaro 1°, Maria Luz Gonzalez-Gadea 3°, Facundo Manes 1°, Marcelo Cetkovich 1°, Carla Pallavicini 4°, Teresa Torralva 1°, Laura Alethia de la Fuente 4°
1° Institute of Cognitive and Translational Neuroscience (INCYT, INECO-UF-CONICET)
2° Department of Neuroscience and Learning, Catholic University of Uruguay
3° Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of San Andres, Buenos Aires, Argentina
4° Department of Physics, University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina
Cocaine consumption is linked to reduced attentional ERPs -P3a and P3b, indicating bottom-up and top-down deficits respectively. At cognitive level, faster routes of administration (e.g., smoked cocaine [SC]) show larger impairments than slower routes (e.g., insufflated cocaine [IC]). We assess these ERPs based on the route of cocaine administration. We expected SC dependent (SCD) to exhibit reduced P3a modulation, and both SCD and IC dependent (ICD) to show reduced P3b modulation. We studied 25 SCD, 22 ICD matched by poly-consumption profiles, and 25 controls matched by demography. We combined EEG data from the Global-Local task with attentional cognitive tasks. At the behavioral level, SCD displayed attentional deficits in both bottom-up and top-down processes, while ICD only showed a tendency for top-down deficits. Modulation of P3a and P3b was lower in consumers. We observed subtle route-based differences, with larger differences in the P3a for SCD and in the P3b for ICD. Neurophysiological and behavioral data converged. Different routes of administration lead to distinct modulations of attentional neurocognitive profiles. Specifically, SCD showed greater attentional impairment, mainly at bottom-up/P3a, while ICD at top-down/P3b deficits. These findings emphasize the crucial role of considering the route of administration in both clinical and research settings and support the use of attentional ERPs as valid measures for assessing attentional deficits in substance abuse.