A theta-burst stimulation study found changes in drug-word color discrimination and selected EEG features. Those findings concern cue processing under a specific task, rather than proof that every aspect of attention normalized.
Chen and colleagues analyzed 49 patients with severe methamphetamine use disorder assigned to active or sham intermittent theta-burst stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Participants completed 20 sessions and an Addiction Stroop task before and afterward with 64-channel EEG. Data-quality exclusions left unequal analysis groups of 30 active and 19 sham participants.
After treatment, the active group made fewer color-discrimination errors for methamphetamine words than the sham group. Time-by-group effects were reported for the drug-versus-neutral contrast in N1 amplitude and P3 latency, with additional beta-band changes. Amplitude, latency and spectral power describe different signal properties. Correlation between N1 change and craving does not establish that the electrical change caused craving improvement.
The study did not track follow-up Addiction Stroop performance, so persistence of these specific behavioral and electrophysiological effects remained unresolved. EEG data exclusions and the selected treatment population also limit generalization. The experimental intervention was brain stimulation, not methamphetamine dosing. Drug-word interference is different from chemical drug detection, general executive ability or driving performance. The result supports investigating early and later stages of cue processing, while durable clinical benefit and the proposed causal pathway need separate evidence. It should not be combined uncritically with a single-session direct-current stimulation trial, which uses a different intervention and exposure schedule.
See a single-session direct-current stimulation trial and its craving outcome.