Prioritization of personally relevant stimuli in male abstinent heroin users

The prioritization of the processing of highly relevant personal stimuli pervades various cognitive domains and is vital to our survival and normal functioning. However, the extent to which this process is altered by drug addiction remains to be elucidated. The present study examined the self-prioritization effect in abstinent heroin users (AHUs) using the perceptual matching task, which controls for the confounding effect of familiarity, and further modified it to revalidate the drug-prioritization effect (DPE). Eighty male AHUs and forty healthy control (HC) participants were recruited for this study. Participants filled in the questionnaire and completed two perceptual matching tasks. The questionnaire included demographic information (e.g., age, education) and characteristics of drug use, whereas the HC participants only completed the demographic information. AHUs exhibited a robust self-advantage in the self-perceptual matching task, and that the magnitude of the self-prioritization effect (MSPE) was comparable to that in HCs. Only AHUs prioritized the processing of drug-related stimuli in the drug-perceptual matching task, and showed similar prioritization effects during self- and drug-related processing. The MSPE and magnitude of the drug-prioritization effect (MDPE) were correlated with the heroin consumption behavior in AHUs. The process of self-prioritization is intact in drug users, and they uniquely prioritize the processing of drug cues. The similar pattern between the self- and drug-related processing provided behavioral evidence to support that drug cues are likely to be associated with heightened personal relevance in drug users. These prioritization processes may play critical roles in addiction and provide a promising route for intervention.