Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Agustina Aragón-Daud Aragón-Daud | email: agus.aragondaud@gmail.com
Agustina Aragón-Daud 1°, Sofia Oberti De Luca 1°, Claudia Pascovich 2°, Teresa Torralva 1°, Laura de la Fuente 1°
1° nstituto de Neurociencia Cognitiva y Traslacional (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas – Fundación INECO – Universidad Favaloro)
2° Neurobiology of Sleep Laboratory, Universidad de la República
Early cocaine consumption has been associated with attention and executive functions impairment. The severity of these deficits depends upon the route of administration with faster routes, such as smoking, showing stronger impairments than slower routes such as snorting. Structural data from MRI supports these findings, as cocaine users present reduced grey matter in key areas for these cognitive functions, such as the bilateral caudate, compared to control group. Our study aims to assess these findings at a neurophysiological level. We registered EEG data from 72 participants: smoked-cocaine group (n = 25), snorted-cocaine group (n = 22) and healthy control group (n = 25). We administered a passive auditory oddball paradigm that evaluates brain response to violations of temporal regularities that are either local in time or global across several seconds. Given that global violations elicit a P300 response, we aim to evaluate differences between the three groups. The results of this study will have strong implications on the robustness of preview findings, as it tests neurophysiological data, a level of evidence not explored before.