Attention bias modification in drug addiction: Enhancing control of subsequent habits

Significance This study assessed whether habitual (drug-related) attentional processes can be disrupted by cognitive reappraisal, an adaptive emotion regulation strategy that is presumed to deploy prefrontal cortex–mediated cognitive control, in cocaine-addicted individuals. The novelty of the current study is in the multimethod integration of outcome measures (i.e., using objective psychophysiological measures such as the late positive potentials and gaze duration but also past behavior) and the focus on the down-regulation of spontaneous attention bias to drug-related cues presented outside of the volitional/motivated self-regulation cognitive reappraisal window, achieved using a task design that maximized robust detection of subtle trial-by-trial perturbations in drug cue reactivity in cocaine-addicted individuals.