When the executive gets drunk: effects of alcohol on cognitive neurodynamics
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1
Univ. California San Diego, Radiology, United States
Chronic alcoholism results in deficits in executive functions with prefrontal cortex being particularly vulnerable to alcohol-induced damage. Similarly, acute intoxication is deleterious to situations of increased complexity that manipulate novelty, conflicting or ambiguous task demands, or the capacity to inhibit maladaptive responses. Inability to maintain inhibitory control over drinking is considered to be fundamental to alcohol abuse both as a dispositional risk factor and as a consequence of heavy drinking. We have explored vulnerability of the strategic decision making process to the effects of moderate intoxication in a series of multimodal imaging studies using cognitive control tasks. Modified versions of Stroop, Eriksen Flanker, and Anti-saccade tasks all include a high-conflict condition in which prepotent responses need to be overcome in favor of non-automatic but task-relevant responses. Young, healthy subjects served as their own controls by participating in both alcohol and placebo conditions in a counterbalanced manner. Our fMRI studies indicate that a distributed, fronto-parietal cortical network is activated by incongruity during these tasks. However, activity in the anterior cingulate (AC) area is selectively attenuated by moderate inebriation during both, high conflict trials, and erroneous responses. Similarly, anatomically-constrained MEG approach suggests that alcohol affects the activity estimated to the AC during conflict detection and response stages. Furthermore, frequency-domain analysis reveals alcohol-induced changes in power in lower frequencies. Given the AC's essential contribution to cognitive control, these findings indicate that the executive, top-down function is most vulnerable to moderate intoxication. Alcohol disrupts the strategic mode of processing that is regulated by prior goals and intentions, making us more susceptible to immediate cues and temptations, and thus impairing our ability to refrain from drinking.
Conference:
Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism , Dubrovnik, Croatia, 28 Mar - 1 Apr, 2010.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Neurocognition and Functional Connectivity
Citation:
Marinkovic
K
(2010). When the executive gets drunk: effects of alcohol on cognitive neurodynamics.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.06.00217
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Received:
30 Mar 2010;
Published Online:
30 Mar 2010.
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Correspondence:
Ksenija Marinkovic, Univ. California San Diego, Radiology, San Diego, United States, kmarinkovic@sdsu.edu