Psychological medicine
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Psychological medicine · Sep 2008
Ecstasy use and higher-level cognitive functions: weak effects of ecstasy after control for potential confounds.
Although there have been several reports linking ecstasy use with lowered cognitive function, much previous research suffers from substantial methodological limitations. The present study aimed to examine associations between ecstasy use and higher-level cognitive functions, using a larger sample size than most previous research and better controlling for a range of potential confounds. ⋯ Although the results suggest that heavy use of ecstasy is associated with some lowering of higher-level cognitive functions, they do not indicate a clinical picture of substantial cognitive dysfunction.
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The attention-grabbing properties of drugs to drug-using individuals have been well documented and recent research has begun to suggest that such attentional bias may be related to the severity of drug dependency. Dependence on ketamine has been reported anecdotally but no systematic study has investigated this phenomenon. We aimed to explore attentional biases to incentive stimuli in different populations of ketamine users. ⋯ These data support incentive models of drug use and demonstrate the ability of the attentional bias paradigm to discriminate recreational drug users from those with more dependent patterns of use. Ketamine is a potentially dependence-forming drug.