Attentional Biases for Smoking Cues in Smokers

The activation of motivational systems by stimuli in the environment which are associated with rewarding experiences is able to trigger plastic changes in the brain, thereby altering the attentional priority of those stimuli. As a result, attentional deployment is often abnormal in addiction, with drug-related stimuli attracting attention automatically and gaining control over behavior. For example, smokers show attentional biases towards smoke-related cues, but the mechanisms underlying these effects and the nature of their link to addiction are still debated. Here we investigated the influence of gender and individual factors on the temporal dynamics of attentional deployment towards smoke-related stimuli in young smokers. Crucially, we found a striking gender difference, with only males exhibiting a typical attentional bias for smoke-related items, and the bias revealed strong time dependency. Additionally, for both males and females, various personality traits and smoking habits predicted the direction and strength of the measured bias. Overall, these results unveil a crucial influence of several predictors – notably gender, on the biases of attention towards smoke-related items in chronic smokers.