Impulsivity, cognitive inflexibility, and brain network dysregulation in etomidate use disorder: A clinical and EEG microstate study

Impulsivity, cognitive inflexibility, and brain network dysregulation in etomidate use disorder: A clinical and EEG microstate study. Download PDF Abstract Etomidate, a short-acting GABA_A receptor modulator and emerging novel psychoactive substance, is increasingly abused non-medically. Despite rising clinical concern, the neuropsychological profiles of etomidate use disorder (EUD) remain poorly characterized, prompting this systematic investigation of its clinical and neurophysiological features.

152 individuals with EUD and 67 age-matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited. Participants completed a series of standardized assessments measuring craving, impulsivity, inhibitory control, and habitual behavior. Resting-state EEG data were analyzed using microstate analysis to characterize the temporal organization of large-scale brain activity, and a multidimensional feature-based support vector machine (SVM) model was built to distinguish EUD from HC.

The EUD group exhibited significantly higher craving and impulsivity, and poorer performance on stop-signal and reversal learning tasks. Microstate analysis revealed significantly longer durations of microstates B, C, and D and reduced occurrence of microstate An in the EUD group. This is the first comprehensive characterization of EUD, demonstrating distinct clinical features and alterations in the temporal organization of large-scale brain activity.

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