Parallel studies of cocaine-related neural and cognitive impairment in humans and monkeys

Cocaine users display profound impairments in executive function. Of all the components of executive function, inhibition, or the ability to withhold responding, has been studied the most extensively and may be most impaired. Consistent with these deficits, evidence from imaging studies points to dy...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 2008-10, Vol.363 (1507), p.3257-3266
Main Authors: Beveridge, Thomas J.R, Gill, Kathryn E, Hanlon, Colleen A, Porrino, Linda J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral neuroscience
Cocaine
Cocaine addiction
Cognitive impairment
Executive Function
Fetal cocaine exposure
Functional Activity
Imaging
Metabolism
Neuropsychology
Non-Human Primate
Prefrontal Cortex
Primates
Review
Working memory
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Summary:Cocaine users display profound impairments in executive function. Of all the components of executive function, inhibition, or the ability to withhold responding, has been studied the most extensively and may be most impaired. Consistent with these deficits, evidence from imaging studies points to dysregulation in medial and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, areas activated during performance of inhibition tasks. Other aspects of executive function including updating, shifting and decision making are also deficient in cocaine users, and these deficits are paralleled by abnormalities in patterns of prefrontal cortical activation. The extent to which cocaine plays a role in these effects, however, is not certain, and cannot be determined solely on the basis of human studies. Investigations using a non-human primate model of increasing durations of cocaine exposure revealed that initially the effects of cocaine were restricted to ventromedial and orbital prefrontal cortices, but as exposure was extended the intensity and spatial extent of the effects on functional activity also expanded rostrally and laterally. Given the spatial overlap in prefrontal pathology between human and monkey studies, these longitudinal mapping studies in non-human primates provide a unique window of understanding into the dynamic neural changes that are occurring early in human cocaine abuse.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2008.0102