Appetitive responses toward smoking‐related stimuli in abstinence‐motivated, non‐deprived individuals with chronic tobacco dependence: A multi‐methodological investigation

Participants exhibited a statistically significantly attenuated acoustic startle reflex toward smoking-related versus neutral stimuli (P < 0.001, Rosenthal's r = 0.39), while no statistically significant differences emerged for other psychophysiological or cognitive-behavioral measures. Neural measures showed statistically significantly heightened reactivity toward smoking-related versus neutral stimuli in sensory and motor regions (e.g. precuneus; P < 0.001, Rosenthal's r = 0.44) but reduced activity in reward-related regions (e.g. striatum; P = 0.021, Cohen's d = 0.22). Higher craving was statistically significantly associated with stronger appetitive responses on some measures from all assessment methods (Ps ≤ 0.041), whereas greater tobacco dependence and smoking behavior were linked to reduced neural reactivity toward smoking-related stimuli (Ps ≤ 0.036). No statistically significant associations emerged between measures from different methods (factor loadings ≤ 0.145, Ps ≥ 0.076). Differences scores between conditions (rel. = -0.351 to 0.837) were generally less reliable than their individual components (rel. = 0.619 to 0.964; excluding one exception) CONCLUSIONS: Appetitive responses toward smoking-related stimuli may play a limited role in abstinence-motivated, non-deprived individuals with chronic tobacco dependence, whereas habitual motor responses could be more crucial.