The focus of this proposal is to expantd upon the research conducted in the K99 project in which I evaluated the effects of nicotine withdrawal on ERP activity associated with a cognitive reappraisal task used to suppress or enhance emotional activation. This project will take the next step and will evaluate smokers who want to quit smoking, relating their LPP responses to the experimental tasks to treatment outcome. This study will apply the cognitive reappraisal paradigm to a group of smokers undergoing tobacco cessation treatment that follows the clinical practice guidelines for usual care. Specifically, 60 (50% female) smokers with the desire to quit will be recruited from the general Harris county population and asked to attend an orientation session, 2 laboratory sessions (pre-quit and post-quit) and follow-up counseling and abstinence assessment sessions. During the first laboratory session (pre-quit), smokers will complete a laboratory cognitive reappraisal task in which they are asked to enhance or suppress their emotional reaction to pictoral stimuli. Subsequently, they will also begin a course of usual care treatment, involving behavioral counseling and nicotine replacement therapy. Approximately 24 hours after their quit date, smokers will again be asked to attend a laboratory session (post-quit) where they will repeat the cognitive reappraisal task and receive the last 4 weeks worth of nicotine patches. Smokers' abstinence will be biochemically verified on the quit date, and subsequent assessments including the end of treatment (EOT) and 3 months post-quit. This project provides an opportunity to evaluate the predictive power of individual differences in LPP changes following suppression and enhancement of emotional cues relative to a control, both prior to and immediately following quit day, on the participant's ability to stay quit at the end of treatment and again 3 months later. This study is entirely novel in the nicotine dependence and tobacco cessation literature, though the paradigm has been validated using multiple methods.
| Cui, Yong; Versace, Francesco; Engelmann, Jeffrey M et al. (2013) Alpha oscillations in response to affective and cigarette-related stimuli in smokers. Nicotine Tob Res 15:917-24 |
| Versace, Francesco; Lam, Cho Y; Engelmann, Jeffrey M et al. (2012) Beyond cue reactivity: blunted brain responses to pleasant stimuli predict long-term smoking abstinence. Addict Biol 17:991-1000 |
