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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Addictive Disorders
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1458509

Methamphetamine abuse impairs sequential working memory

Provisionally accepted
Wang Yao Wang Yao 1Hao Zhang Hao Zhang 2Shuaiqi Li Shuaiqi Li 1Sensen Song Sensen Song 3Zheng Ye Zheng Ye 4Xiaolin Zhou Xiaolin Zhou 5*
  • 1 School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 2 School of Education and Psychology, Chengdu Normal University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
  • 3 School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
  • 4 Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
  • 5 School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The ability to maintain and manipulate sequential information in working memory, referred to as sequential working memory, plays a vital role in our daily life. While research has shown that methamphetamine abuse affects the neural substrates and the overall functioning of working memory, its specific impact on sequential working memory remains unclear. In this study, we asked 62 abstinent methamphetamine-dependent participants and 59 control participants to complete a digit ordering task in which they saw four digits one-by-one over time and subsequently rearranged them in ascending order. The four digits were presented either randomly in the experimental condition or in ascending order in the control condition. Results show that methamphetamine-dependent participants performed worse than the controls in the experimental condition in which sequential working memory was needed to complete the task, but not in the control condition in which only short-term memory was needed. This finding demonstrates that methamphetamine abuse impairs sequential working memory.

    Keywords: working memory, Sequential working memory, cognitive deficits, methamphetamine dependence, Digit ordering task

    Received: 02 Jul 2024; Accepted: 02 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Yao, Zhang, Li, Song, Ye and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Xiaolin Zhou, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China

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