Psychophysiological and self-reported responses in individuals with methamphetamine use disorder exposed to emotional video stimuli

Individuals with methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) exhibit irritability and compulsive emotional responses, yet the relevant study is scarce. The characteristic of their positive and negative emotional responses can provide effective targets for the clinical intervention. In this study, we compared the emotional responses of 60 participants with MUD and 30 healthy participants to visual stimuli. They watched four types of video to elicit anger, fear, amusement, and joy emotional responses. The self-report of emotional responses (i.e., arousal, valence, and proximity), skin conductance level, and startle response were measured. Comparing to the healthy controls, the methamphetamine group's subjective arousal level of fear is significantly lower (t = 3.763, p < .01); the skin conductance level of joy is significantly higher (t = 2.086, p < .05), and the level of anger is marginal significantly higher (t = 1.984, p = .05); the startle response level of anger (t = 2.069, p < .05) and joy (t = 2.406, p < .05) is significantly higher. The methamphetamine group exhibited an enhanced emotion response to anger and a decreased response to joy which may indicate the emotion dysregulation problem caused by drug. These results provide effective targets for clinical intervention in treating patients of MUD with emotion dysregulation problems.