Effects of addiction-associated and affective stimuli on the attentional blink in a sample of abstinent opiate dependent patients

The attentional blink reveals the limits of the brain's ability in information processing. It has been extensively studied in people with neurological and psychiatric disturbances to explore the temporal characteristics of information processing and examine attention deficits. The aim of the present study is to examine the attentional blink in abstinent opiate dependent patients (AODPs). Also, we planned to study whether addiction-associated and affective stimuli can influence the attentional blink in AODPs. A dual-target rapid serial visual presentation test (RSVP) was used in the present study. The second target consisted of three kinds of stimuli: neutral, addiction-associated and negative. We found that there was an exaggerated attentional blink in AODPs. It suggested that there were the deficits of information processing and attention in AODPs. Addiction-associated stimuli reduced the attentional blink in AODPs, suggesting addiction-associated information were selected by the brain for attentive and perceptual processing. In addition, affective effects on the attentional blink in AODPs were not in the similar level to those in controls.