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

Abstract 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 t  = 2.086, p t  = 1.984, p  = .05); the startle response level of anger ( t  = 2.069, p t  = 2.406, p