While the above focus lies with nicotine abstinence, this network-based perspective could apply equally well to acute, and perhaps protracted, withdrawal from other drugs of abuse. Such a model would account, at least in part, for the coincidence of cognitive deficits observed across drug addicted populations, typically assessed during acute abstinent states (Forman et al., 2004; Goldstein et al., 2004; Hester & Garavan, 2004; Hester et al., 2007, 2009; Sofuoglu et al., 2010). Reduced recruitment of dorsal ACC and ECN regions accompanying these deficits (Goldstein et al., 2004; Forman et al., 2004; Hester and Garavan, 2004; Hester et al., 2009) is also in accordance with such an abstinence model. Of course, any differences arising between abstinent drug-using populations and non-using controls may also reflect pre-existing vulnerabilities or drug-induced functional and/or structural changes independent of acute withdrawal processes (e.g. Zhang et al., 2010). That said, while there exist obvious limitations to studying acute withdrawal processes in drug-addicted individuals, we suggest that following such individuals across the course of treatment may present a means of testing this heuristic framework within different drug
