A Comparative Event-Related Potentials Study between Alcohol Use Disorder, Gambling Disorder and Healthy Control Subjects through a Contextual Go/NoGo Task

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Many societies report a high number of people suffering from behavioral or substance-related addictions, such as gambling or alcohol. Despite psychotherapy, social support, withdrawal, or even medication, it is recognized throughout the world that recovering from an addiction is particularly challenging. Understanding the neurocognitive mechanisms triggering addictive disorders is therefore particularly relevant to optimizing addiction treatment. In the present study, we investigated whether or not patients suffering from gambling or alcohol use disorders are efficient at inhibiting their responses when their attention is attracted by a neutral, rewarding, or cueing context related to their own addiction (alcohol vs. gambling). Such behavioral and neural evidence may help clinicians to implement novel targeted intervention more suited to the individual needs of these patients. ABSTRACT: (1) Background: Inhibitory and rewarding processes that mediate attentional biases to addiction-related cues may slightly differ between patients suffering from alcohol use (AUD) or gambling (GD) disorder. (2) Methods: 23 AUD inpatients, 19 GD patients, and 22 healthy controls performed four separate Go/NoGo tasks, in, respectively, an alcohol, gambling, food, and neutral long-lasting cueing context during the recording of event-related potentials (ERPs). (3) Results: AUD patients showed a poorer inhibitory performance than controls (slower response latencies, lower N2d, and delayed P3d components). In addition, AUD patients showed a preserved inhibitory performance in the alcohol-related context (but a more disrupted one in the food-related context), while GD patients showed a specific inhibitory deficit in the game-related context, both indexed by N2d amplitude modulations. (4) Conclusions: Despite sharing common addiction-related mechanisms, AUD and GD patients showed different patterns of response to (non-)rewarding cues that should be taken into account in the therapeutic context.