Impairments and recovery of neurocognitive control and cardiac vagal regulation in males with substance use disorders

Abstract

Previous studies have indicated that neurocognitive control in people with substance use disorders (SUDs) tends to be impaired. Impaired cardiac vagal regulation may underlie the disrupted self-regulatory and emotional processes in people with SUDs. However, it is unclear whether both neurocognitive control (indexed by intraindividual reaction time variability, IIRTV) and cardiac vagal regulation (indexed by resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) are impaired and whether they can recover after abstinence. This study examined whether both neurocognitive control and cardiac vagal regulation were impaired in males with SUDs, and particularly whether they could recover after abstinence. The present study compared participants’ IIRTV and resting RSA between healthy control group (N = 28), short-term abstinence group (N = 27), and long-term abstinence group (N = 31). The two-choice oddball task was used to measure IIRTV, and electrocardiogram (ECG) data was collected to obtain resting RSA. IIRTV of both healthy control and long-term abstinence groups were significantly lower than short-term abstinence group while there was no significant difference between the healthy control and long-term abstinence groups in IIRTV; resting RSA of healthy control group was significantly higher than both short-term and long-term abstinence groups while there was no significant difference between short-term and long-term abstinence groups in resting RSA. The findings indicated that neurocognitive control and cardiac vagal regulation were impaired in males with SUDs. Impaired IIRTV in males with SUDs might recover after long-term abstinence, however, the impaired resting RSA was unchanged despite almost 2 years of treatment in males with SUDs.