Elsevier

Drug and Alcohol Dependence

Volume 181, 1 December 2017, Pages 242-254
Drug and Alcohol Dependence

Registered Report
Impairment of manual but not saccadic response inhibition following acute alcohol intoxication

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2017.08.022Get rights and content
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Abstract

Background

Alcohol impairs response inhibition; however, it remains contested whether such impairments affect a general inhibition system, or whether affected inhibition systems are embedded in, and specific to, each response modality. Further, alcohol-induced impairments have not been disambiguated between proactive and reactive inhibition mechanisms, and nor have the contributions of action-updating impairments to behavioural ‘inhibition’ deficits been investigated.

Methods

Forty Participants (25 female) completed both a manual and a saccadic stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) task before and after a 0.8 g/kg dose of alcohol and, on a separate day, before and after a placebo. Blocks in which participants were required to ignore the signal to stop or make an additional ‘dual' response were included to obtain measures of proactive inhibition as well as updating of attention and action.

Results

Alcohol increased manual but not saccadic SSRT. Proactive inhibition was weakly reduced by alcohol, but increases in the reaction times used to baseline this contrast prevent clear conclusions regarding response caution. Finally, alcohol also increased secondary dual response times of the dual task uniformly as a function of the delay between tasks, indicating an effect of alcohol on action-updating or execution.

Conclusions

The modality-specific effects of alcohol favour the theory that response inhibition systems are embedded within response modalities, rather than there existing a general inhibition system. Concerning alcohol, saccadic control appears relatively more immune to disruption than manual control, even though alcohol affects saccadic latency and velocity. Within the manual domain, alcohol affects multiple types of action updating, not just inhibition.

Keywords

Alcohol
Inhibition
Manual
Saccade
SSRT

Cited by (0)

Protocol received 09 September 2014; Protocol accepted 23 January 2015; Received 10 April 2017; Received in revised form 19 June 2017; Accepted 22 August 2017.