Alcohol Hangover Slightly Impairs Response Selection but not Response Inhibition.

Antje Opitz,Christian Beste,Jan Hubert,Ann-Kathrin Stock

doi:10.3390/jcm8091317

Abstract

Alcohol hangover commonly occurs after an episode of heavy drinking. It has previously been demonstrated that acute high-dose alcohol intoxication reduces cognitive control, while automatic processes remain comparatively unaffected. However, it has remained unclear whether alcohol hangover, as a consequence of binge drinking, modulates the interplay between cognitive control and automaticity in a comparable way. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of alcohol hangover on controlled versus automatic response selection and inhibition. N = 34 healthy young men completed a Simon Nogo task, once sober and once hungover. Hangover symptoms were experimentally induced by a standardized administration of alcoholic drinks (with high congener content) on the night before the hangover appointment. We found no significant hangover effects, which suggests that alcohol hangover did not produce the same functional deficits as an acute high-dose intoxication. Yet still, add-on Bayesian analyses revealed that hangover slightly impaired response selection, but not response inhibition. This pattern of effects cannot be explained with the current knowledge on how ethanol and its metabolite acetaldehyde may modulate response selection and inhibition via the dopaminergic or GABAergic system.

Highlights

Alcohol hangover is an unpleasant state that may occur after an episode of heavy drinking, that is, once the breath/blood alcohol concentration (BAC) returns to 0.0%
Demonstrating the persistence of such detrimental effects during hangover would provide an important functional link, which may help to explain why and how regular binge drinking increases the risk of developing alcohol use disorder (AUD) [13,14,15]: If impairments of cognitive control functions persisted beyond acute intoxication, the poor cognitive functioning on the day following alcohol use might promote continued aberrant drinking as well as other decisions that may be detrimental to the overall health of affected individuals
Add-on Bayesian analysis provided positive evidence for rejecting the assumption that alcohol hangover alters the interplay between controlled and automatic processes in a similar fashion as intoxication. As both acute alcohol intoxication and AUD show similar impairment patterns [16,17,18,19,20], we had initially hypothesized that alcohol hangover might be characterized by similar changes, providing a functional link that helps to explain why and how regular binge drinking increases the risk of developing AUD [13,14,15]

Summary

Introduction

Alcohol hangover is an unpleasant state that may occur after an episode of heavy drinking, that is, once the breath/blood alcohol concentration (BAC) returns to 0.0%. Regular binge-drinking does increase the likelihood and frequency of hangover, it strongly increases the risk of developing alcohol use disorder (AUD) [13,14,15] While it is still unclear whether or how these two consequences are functionally linked, it has been shown that the acute cognitive effects of a high-dose alcohol intoxication resemble the pattern of cognitive deficits observed in AUD patients—both produce pronounced impairments in cognitive control/executive functioning, while behavioural automaticity is comparatively preserved [16,17,18,19,20]. Both the dopaminergic and GABAergic neurotransmitter systems play a strong modulatory role for cognitive control including response selection [33,34,35,36,37] and might provide a functional link between all three phenomena

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