The effects of acute abstinence from smoking and performance-based rewards on performance monitoring

Abstinence from smoking disrupts performance in multiple cognitive domains, and such cognitive effects may serve to maintain smoking behavior. Rather than having specific effects on a narrow domain of processing, abstinence may disrupt more general cognitive control processes and/or motivation.

The present study tested the prediction that overnight abstinence from smoking would disrupt a general performance monitoring system indexed via the error-related negativity (ERN). A secondary aim was to determine the extent to which performance-based monetary rewards improved the ERN among smokers and whether the effect of the reward was diminished during abstinence.

The ERN was assessed during a flanker task among 25 heavy, non-treatment-seeking smokers both when smoking as usual and after overnight abstinence; reward and no-reward trial blocks occurred within each session.

As predicted, mean ERN amplitude was reduced during abstinence. The ERN was enhanced by reward; this effect did not vary with smoking abstinence.

This study provides novel data which suggest that acute abstinence from smoking disrupts a neurophysiological index of a general performance monitoring system that is involved in a range of cognitive functions. The ERN may be a useful complement to narrow-band cognitive studies of abstinence and interventions designed to target cognition in addiction. Because the ERN was concurrently sensitive to abstinence and performance-based incentives, it may be particularly useful for examining the interplay of cognition and motivation in smoking and smoking cessation.