Executive Functions in Tobacco Use Disorder: New Challenges and Opportunities Martín Ríos, Raquel López Torrecillas, Francisca Martín Tamayo, Ignacio Smoking Neuropsychological assessment Executive function Working memory Tobacco The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Bioethics Committee of the University of Granada (Spain). The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. The authors would like to thank the research participants for their time and dedication. There is increasing evidence that executive functions have significative effects on nicotine abuse. An unresolved challenge for smoking cessation interventions is the detection of factors associated with nicotine use. In order to understand how cognition is affected by nicotine abuse, this study was designed to determine the relationship between years of smoking addiction and several variables of executive functions. The sample was composed of 174 smokers, whose age ranged between 27 and 69 years old (M = 47.44; SD = 8.48). Smokers were assessed at baseline with measures of cognitive inhibition [Go/No Go Task and Five Digit Test (FDT)], updating [Visual Search and Attention Test (VSAT) and Letter-Number Sequencing (WAIS IV)] and shifting [Delay Discounting Task (DDT) and Iowa Gambling Task (IGT)] while the outcome measure was years of smoking. The linear regression and correlation analysis highlighting that the variable which has the strongest association with years of smoking is updating. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANCOVA) followed by Tukey post-hoc tests revealed significant differences such that heavy smoking indicated worse performance than light smoking on updating tasks. These findings report the ability of working memory to predict years of smoking and suggest that cigarette packaging warning may experience a loss of effectiveness in heavy smokers. 2021-04-28T07:35:19Z 2021-04-28T07:35:19Z 2021-03-15 journal article Martín Ríos R, López-Torrecillas F and Martín Tamayo I (2021) Executive Functions in Tobacco Use Disorder: New Challenges and Opportunities. Front. Psychiatry 12:586520. doi: [https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.586520] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/68158 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.586520 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ open access Atribución 3.0 España Frontiers Research Foundation