SmoCuDa: A Validated Smoking Cue Database to Reliably Induce Craving in Tobacco Use Disorder

Cue-reactivity paradigms provide valuable insights into the underlying mechanisms of nicotine craving in nicotine-dependent subjects. In order to study cue-driven nicotine craving, robust and validated stimulus datasets are essential.

The aim of this study was to generate and validate a large set of individually rated smoking-related cues that allow for assessment of different stimulus intensities along the dimensions craving, valence, and arousal.

The image database consisted of 330 visual cues. Two hundred fifty smoking-associated pictures (Creative Commons license) were chosen from online databases and showed a widespread variety of smoking-associated content. Eighty pictures from previously published databases were included for cross-validation. Forty volunteers with tobacco use disorder rated "urge-to-smoke," "valence," and "arousal" for all images on a 100-point visual analogue scale. Pictures were also labelled according to 18 categories such as lit/unlit cigarettes in mouth, cigarette end, and cigarette in ashtray.

Ratings (mean ± SD) were as follows: urge to smoke, 44.9 ± 13.2; valence, 51.2 ± 7.6; and arousal, 54.6 ± 7.1. All ratings, particularly "urge to smoke," were widely distributed along the whole scale spectrum.

We present a novel image library of well-described smoking-related cues, which were rated on a continuous scale along the dimensions craving, valence, and arousal that accounts for inter-individual differences. The rating software, image database, and their ratings are publicly available at https://smocuda.github.io.