Dissociable deficits in the decision-making cognition of chronic amphetamine abusers, opiate abusers, patients with focal damage to prefrontal cortex, and tryptophan …

RD Rogers, BJ Everitt, A Baldacchino… - …, 1999 - Elsevier
We used a novel computerized decision-making task to compare the decision-making
behavior of chronic amphetamine abusers, chronic opiate abusers, and patients with focal
lesions of orbital prefrontal cortex (PFC) or dorsolateral/medial PFC. We also assessed the
effects of reducing central 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) activity using a tryptophan-depleting
amino acid drink in normal volunteers. Chronic amphetamine abusers showed sub-optimal
decisions (correlated with years of abuse), and deliberated for significantly longer before …