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Impaired Reproduction of Three-Dimensional Objects by Cocaine-Dependent Subjects

Received April 24, 2007; revised August 3 and September 6, 2007; accepted September 11, 2007. Drs. Elman, Chi, Ryan, and Lukas are affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Drs. Gurvits, Lasko, and Pitman are affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Address correspondence to Igor Elman, M.D., Department of Psychiatry, McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, 115 Mill St., Belmont, MA 02478-9106; ielman{at}partners.org (e-mail).

This study employed a perceptual-motor task of figure copying in 27 cocaine-dependent, 26 marijuana-abusing or dependent, and 33 healthy subjects. Cocaine-dependent and healthy individuals did not differ in their scores on the copying of a two-dimensional diamond and a cross. In contrast, cocaine-dependent subjects displayed significantly poorer ability to copy a three-dimensional Necker cube, a smoking pipe, a hidden line elimination cube, a pyramid, and a dissected pyramid. Marijuana users’ performance on all copied figures was comparable to that of the healthy comparison subjects. Considering that decreased three-dimensional copying ability has been found to be associated with fatal injuries, further studies are needed to investigate possible underlying mechanisms (e.g., parietal lobe damage) and their role in the pathophysiology of cocaine dependence.

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