Reduced Sensitivity to Negative Feedback May Lead to Risky Decision‐Making in Amphetamine Users

In Taiwan, amphetamines are the main drug of abuse. While drug abuse is often related to individual risky decision-making, how this relates to underlying neural mechanisms in amphetamine abusers remains unclear. The current study was carried out to help better understand this. A Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) was used to examine individual risky decision-making in conjunction with event-related potential (ERP) recording and presentation of questionnaires relating to behavioural control. Compared with healthy controls, amphetamine users had a lower score on the Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS) scale and showed reduced amplitudes in feedback-related negativity (FRN) and error-related negativity (ERN) ERP components following negative feedback on the task. Amphetamine users were less sensitive to punitive or aversive stimuli. This reduced sensitivity might lead to a higher tendency for risky decision-making, with them less able to learn from mistakes and thus repeatedly engage in risky behaviours.