Metamfetamin Kullanım Bozukluğunda Görsel İşlemleme ve Bellekle İlişkili Süreçlerin İncelenmesi

Abstract

There are documented changes in visual perception in methamphetamine use disorder. In this study, changes in cognitive processes such as imagination, binocular rivalry dynamics, implicit attentional biases, visual awareness, and false memory, and the relationship between these processes and psychopathology dimensions such as emotional regulation difficulties, dissociative symptoms, intrusive mental phenomena, rumination, and personality traits in methamphetamine use disorder and other psychiatric disorders were assessed. The study sample consisted of 120 individuals, 13 of whom had methamphetamine use disorder, 71 had psychiatric diseases other than substance use disorder, and 36 were controls. Binocular rivalry tests, Posner test, Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) False Memory Paradigm, Trail-Making Tests, Emotion Regulation Scale-Brief Form, Dissociation Questionnaire, Wender Utah Scale, The Basic Personality Characteristics Scale were applied to the all study sample; Addiction Severity Index, Craving Experience Questionnaire, Drug Craving Scale, Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, and Visual Hallucination Assessment Scale were applied to the methamphetamine use disorder patients; Ruminative Response Scale, Intrusive Visual Imagery and Verbal Thought Questionnaires, Creative Personality Traits Scale, Hand Dominance Questionnaire, Toronto Alexithymia Scale, Hamilton Depression Scale, Hamilton Anxiety Scale, and Bipolarity Index were applied to the control and other psychiatric diseases other than substance use disorder groups. In the methamphetamine use disorder group, priming and the switch rate in the binocular rivalry tests, the average of correctly remembered words in the free recall test was statistically lower than the control and other psychiatric disease groups. In contrast, the tail-making test A and B times and the false alarm rate in the false memory task were significantly higher. Patients with methamphetamine use disorder and depression displayed different curves from the control group in the Posner test, and the inhibition of return occurred in the range of 200-400 ms. Emotion regulation difficulties, dissociative symptoms, rumination, involuntary visual imagery, and involuntary verbal thoughts were found to be more common in patients with depression. These findings show that different visual processing processes are interrelated, and processes related to visual processing and false memory can provide guidance for understanding psychopathology. In methamphetamine use disorder, widespread impairment in visual processing and processes related to false memory formation has been found, and it has been shown that patients with major depressive episodes also have impairment in some visual processing areas, albeit milder than methamphetamine addicts. It has also been shown that these processes are associated with anxiety, emotion regulation difficulties, dissociative symptoms, rumination, and intrusive mental phenomena that can be associated with depression. Determining how perception and memory are shaped in the brain when ambiguous situations simulated by illusion-based experiments are in question may be valuable for understanding different psychiatric diseases and the different dimensions of psychopathology in these diseases.