Neuropsychological impairments in crack cocaine- dependent inpatients: preliminary findings

Objective: Although cocaine use is a significant public health problem, there is relative paucity of scientific data on long-term neurocognitive conse-quences of the exposure to the substance. Methods: This study examined the association between crack cocaine dependence and neuropsychological performance. An extended battery of neu-ropsychological tests was administered to 15 abstinent cocaine abusers, inpatients in abstinence for two weeks, and 15 non-drug-using control sub-jects matched for age, gender, education, socio-economic status, handedness and IQ. Results: The preliminary findings showed statistical significance (p<0,05) on differences of performance in attention, verbal fluency, verbal memory, vi-sual memory, learning ability and executive functions. Conclusions: These results represent evidences that cocaine abuse is associated with decrements in cognitive functioning, similar to cognitive disor-ders associated to prefrontal and temporal brain impairments. Knowledge of specific cognitive deficits in cocaine abusers may be useful for designing more effective substance abuse prevention and treatment programs