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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Addict Neurosci. 2023 Feb 14;6:100075. doi: 10.1016/j.addicn.2023.100075

Figure 1: Cue reactivity can be misleading.

Figure 1:

Without measuring responses to non-drug-related motivationally relevant stimuli, reactivity to drug-related cues cannot be interpreted. Panel A shows the hypothetical neurophysiological responses evoked by drug-related and neutral stimuli in two smokers. If we calculate “cue reactivity” as the difference cue minus neutral, it seems that “Smoker 1” has stronger responses to drug cues than “Smoker 2”. However, Panel B shows that Smoker 1 reacts more to non-drug-related motivationally relevant stimuli than to drug-related cues, while Smoker 2 reacts more to drug-related cues than to pleasant stimuli. Thus, non-drug-related motivationally relevant stimuli should be considered a more appropriate comparison for determining drug cue reactivity.