Evaluation of Attention Bias in Morphine and Methamphetamine Abusers Towards Emotional Scenes During Early Abstinence: An Eye-Tracking Study

introduction: we hypothesized that inappropriate attention during the period of abstinencein individuals with substance use disorder can result in an inadequate perception of emotionand unsuitable reaction to emotional scenes. the main aim of this research was to evaluate theattentional bias towards emotional images in former substance abusers and compare it to healthyadults. methods: paired images of general scenes consisting of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutralimages were presented to subjects for 3 s while their attentional bias and eye movements weremeasured by eye tracking. the participants were 72 male adults consisting of 23 healthy control,24 morphine former abusers, and 25 methamphetamine former abusers. the former abuserswere recruited from a private addiction quitting center and addiction rehabilitation campus. thehealthy individuals were selected from general population. number and duration of first fixation,duration of first gaze, and sustained attention towards emotional scenes were measured as themain variables and the data were analyzed using the repeated measures anova. results: a significant difference was observed between former morphine abusers and healthycontrol in terms of number and duration of first fixations and first gaze duration towards pleasantimages. discussion: individuals with morphine use disorder have more problems with attending toemotional images compared to methamphetamine abusers and healthy people.