Heroin abusers' performance on the Tower of London Test relates to the baseline EEG alpha2 mean frequency shifts

Abstract

Planning function deficit is a most consistent finding in neuropsychological studies of heroin addicts. The performance on the Tower of London Test (TLT) correlated with the duration of daily heroin abuse (DDHA) in our previous study. Alpha2 mean frequency in anterior/central derivations was also predicted by DDHA in the same patient population. This retrospective study was undertaken in order to understand better the relationships between observed neurological deviations in heroin abusers.Thirty three heroin addicts and 12 healthy males were evaluated with 14 neuropsychological tests and resting eyes closed EEG. Multivariate tests showed that performance on the difficult (5 move) problems of TLT was strongly predicted by the EEG alpha2 mean frequency shifts, and these relationships were generally mediated by chronic heroin length. However, post-hoc analyses at separate leads demonstrated that the relationships between cognitive variables and alpha2 mean frequencies at left hemisphere were independent from chronic heroin effects, whereas elevation of alpha2 frequency in right hemisphere was strongly predicted by chronic heroin intake length. The patients with extremely high alpha2 mean frequency at left central region were especially prone to failure in TLT, that might be due to the inability of the hypothesized alpha2 generating network, which normally projecting to the central and temporal derivations bilaterally and to the right posterior temporal derivation, to function appropriately. Hence, it was concluded that planning dysfunction in heroin abusers is related to alpha2 mean frequency shifts predominantly at central regions.

Effective brain network analysis with resting-state EEG data: a comparison between heroin abstinent and non-addicted subjects

“…It proposes one strategy to analyze brain networks of HA and NA subjects using the advanced tools MVARICA and GPDC on the resting-state EEG data. Differently from previous studies of heroin addiction [7-9, 16, 17], [45][46][47], this work studies the BFS alterations in the source space, and effective connectivity is estimated in the frequency domain.…”

“…They found that α2 (10-13 Hz) frequency shifts from frontal and central locations, especially in the right hemisphere, were associated with the length of addictive history. Heroin craving was also associated with α1 (8-10 Hz) frequency shifts at central, temporal and occipital regions [46,53]. The study of [53] also explored the relationship between Wechsler adult intelligence scale (WAIS) and resting-state EEG power spectral shifts; it indicated that mean frequencies of δ (1-4 Hz), θ2 (6)(7)(8), α (8-13 Hz), and β (13-30 Hz) of right hemispheric frontal/temporal sensors were associated with cognitive dysfunctions of heroin abusers.…”

“…It has been widely accepted that chronic heroin abuse induces abnormalities in active brain regions [2,46]. Previous studies using fMRI data showed that bilateral medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), bilateral dorsal medial thalamus, bilateral cuneus, and lingual gyrus were diminished in heroin addicts compared with normal controls [1].…”

“…Previous studies using fMRI data showed that bilateral medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), bilateral dorsal medial thalamus, bilateral cuneus, and lingual gyrus were diminished in heroin addicts compared with normal controls [1]. Since these accurate and deep brain regions are difficult to detect by EEG, there have been some EEG studies to verify their corresponding or nearby cortical surface regions: frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital regions [16,46,52].…”

Brain Mapping of drug addiction in witdrawal condition based P300 Signals

“…The BCI based EEG equipment is one of the noninvasive techniques and it is not only used by patients but also by healthy users with various applications [1][2][3][4][5][6][7].Over the last few decades, EEG activities have been widely used to study the brain cognitive dysfunction and neurobiological alterations among drug addicts [8]. In addition to EEG spectral analysis to examine the effects of drug abuser on brain functionality (Davydov and Polunina, 2004;Franken et al, 2004;Polunina and Davydov, 2006;Fingelkurts et al, 2009) [9][10][11][12], brain event-related potential (ERP) components were evaluated as a reliable approach to study cognitive abilities related to information processing, selective attention, and memory updating of addicts [8]. Among various ERP components, measuring the amplitude and latency of mismatch negativity, P300, and P600 components in standard condition has attracted special attention in ERP evaluation among addicts [2,13,14].…”