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ABSTINENT addicts would rather look at images involving their drug of choice than pornographic images, pictures of babies or other conventionally pleasing imagery, new research has found.
"The pleasant images were more pleasant to them and more arousing than the cocaine images," Dr Rita Goldstein of the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, the principal investigator on the study, told Reuters Health.
"But still they don't choose those pleasant images more often."
The experiment consisted of 20 cocaine-addicts and 20 controls, who chose a card from one of four decks, each of which contained a preponderance of one type of image: cocaine-related images (showing the drug itself or people using it); pleasant images; unpleasant, aversive images such as mutilated bodies; or neutral images.
The study participants didn't know that each deck contained more of a particular type of image. In the second task, they chose between two images taken from the four decks and placed side by side.
The cocaine-addicted study participants chose the cocaine-related images more often than the controls, who found such images aversive. But when asked to rate how pleasant an image was, the cocaine addicts rated the pleasant images more highly than the control group did.
And the more heavily a person had used cocaine in the last 30 days, the stronger his or her preference for the cocaine-related pictures. "That's an objective measure to tap into severity of use," Goldstein said.
The fact that this preference was confirmed scientifically suggests that such images offer a useful way to study and perhaps even treat addiction.
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