Alcohol impairs brain reactivity to explicit loss feedback

• Published in: Psychopharmacologia 2011-11, Vol.218 (2), p.419-428
• Main Authors: Nelson, Lindsay D., Patrick, Christopher J., Collins, Paul, Lang, Alan R., Bernat, Edward M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Alcohol; Alcoholic Intoxication - physiopathology; Alcoholism; Analysis; Beverages; Biological and medical sciences; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Brain; Breath Tests; Drinking of alcoholic beverages; Ethanol; Ethanol - adverse effects; Event-related potentials; Evoked Potentials - drug effects; Feedback; Feedback, Psychological - drug effects; Female; Frequency dependence; Gambling - psychology; Humans; Intoxication; Male; Medical sciences; Mismatch negativity; Neurosciences; Original Investigation; Pharmacology/Toxicology; Psychiatry; Sampling; Toy industry; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0033-3158; 1432-2072
• DOI: 10.1007/s00213-011-2323-3

Rationale Alcohol impairs the brain's detection of performance errors as evidenced by attenuated error-related negativity (ERN), an event-related potential (ERP) thought to reflect a brain system that monitors one's behavior. However, it remains unclear whether alcohol impairs performance-monitoring capacity across a broader range of contexts, including those entailing external feedback. Objective This study sought to determine whether alcohol-related monitoring deficits are specific to internal recognition of errors (reflected by the ERN) or occur also in external cuing contexts. We evaluated the impact of alcohol consumption on the feedback-related negativity (FRN), an ERP thought to engage a similar process as the ERN but elicited by negative performance feedback in the environment. Methods In an undergraduate sample randomly assigned to drink alcohol ( n  = 37; average peak BAC = 0.087 g/100 ml, estimated from breath alcohol sampling) or placebo beverages ( n  = 42), ERP responses to gain and loss feedback were measured during a two-choice gambling task. Time–frequency analysis was used to parse the overlapping theta-FRN and delta-P3 and clarified the effects of alcohol on the measures. Results Alcohol intoxication attenuated both the theta-FRN and delta-P3 brain responses to feedback. The theta-FRN attenuation was stronger following loss than gain feedback. Conclusions Attenuation of both theta-FRN and delta-P3 components indicates that alcohol pervasively attenuates the brain's response to feedback in this task. That theta-FRN attenuation was stronger following loss trials is consistent with prior ERN findings and suggests that alcohol broadly impairs the brain's recognition of negative performance outcomes across differing contexts.