The Effects of Substance Abuse on Brain Activity in Resting State Prior to a Task

From previous experiments, it was found that there were abnormalities in brain responses in subjects with alcohol use disorder (AUD) acquired with MRI. However, these findings were isolated to a population of participants with an average age of 49.6, and limited to AUD. This experiment observed college students in recovery from AUD or other drugs. This study utilized the resting state electroencephalogram (rsEEG) before a visual oddball task to compare two groups: the Center for Young Adult Addiction and Recovery (CYAAR) participants with a history of substance abuse, and the control. The motive for this comparison was to investigate the effects of substance use on brain activity. Using low-resolution electromagnetic tomography software (LORETA), rsEEG was used to visualize differences in activity of the different regions of the brain between CYAAR and control participants. Results had a stark contrast between both groups. For participants from CYAAR, there was higher activity in the inferior and lateral frontal lobe, and part of the temporal lobe. These areas are linked with reasoning, voluntary movement, personality, learning and memory. The control participants had higher activity in the left occipital, superior frontal lobe and the parietal lobe. These areas are linked with vision, spatial processing, and sensory processing. These findings highlight that even at a resting state before a task there is still variation in brain activity that distinguishes both groups. With rsEEG and LORETA, these conditions of the brain were quantified and visualized to expand upon previous research.