Abstract
BackgroundResponse inhibition can be classified into stimulus-driven inhibition and intentional inhibition based on the degree of endogenous volition involved. In the past decades, abundant research efforts to study the effects of alcohol on inhibition have focused exclusively on stimulus-driven inhibition. The novel Chasing Memo task measures stimulus-driven and intentional inhibition within the same paradigm. Combined with the stop-signal task, we investigated how alcohol use affects behavioral and psychophysiological correlates of intentional inhibition, as well as stimulus-driven inhibition.MethodsExperiment I focused on intentional inhibition and stimulus-driven inhibition in relation to past-year alcohol use. The Chasing Memo task, the stop-signal task, and questionnaires related to substance use and impulsivity were administered to 60 undergraduate students (18–25 years old). Experiment II focused on behavioral and neural correlates acute alcohol use on performance on the Chasing Memo task by means of electroencephalography (EEG). Sixteen young male adults (21–28 years old) performed the Chasing Memo task once under placebo and once under the influence of alcohol (blood alcohol concentration around 0.05%), while EEG was recorded.ResultsIn experiment I, AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test) total score did not significantly predict stimulus-driven inhibition or intentional inhibition performance. In experiment II, the placebo condition and the alcohol condition were comparable in terms of behavioral indices of stimulus-driven inhibition and intentional inhibition as well as task-related EEG patterns. Interestingly, a slow negative readiness potential (RP) was observed with an onset of about 1.2 s, exclusively before participants stopped intentionally.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that both past-year increases in risky alcohol consumption and moderate acute alcohol use have limited effects on stimulus-driven inhibition and intentional inhibition. These conclusions cannot be generalized to alcohol use disorder and high intoxication levels. The RP might reflect processes involved in the formation of an intention in general.
Highlights
The aim of the Experiment I was to test whether past-year typical alcohol use influenced stimulus-driven as well as intentional inhibition
Out of the 120 trials, on average participants lost the star 31 times (SD = 21), ranging from 6 to 145. This indicates that most of the participants have a good mastery of the task and should be able to allocate attention to their behavioral intentions
Bayesian linear regression showed that the null model provided a fit that was 2.2 times better than the model that added the factor gender, 3.0 times better than the model that added Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT) and 5.1 times better than the model that added Inhibition Category
Summary
The aim of the Experiment I was to test whether past-year typical alcohol use influenced stimulus-driven as well as intentional inhibition. Some researchers found that compared to controls, heavy drinkers showed impaired stopping performance, signified by either longer stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) on the SST [4] or higher commission error rates in the go/no-go task (GNG) [23, 24] These findings, conflict with a series of other studies. It was first recorded by Kornhuber and Deecke (1964) and attracted broad attention after Libet and colleagues’ striking work in 1983 [38, 74] In their experiment, participants were instructed to press a response button whenever they became aware of the intention to do so and report the time of this urge (the W-moment). Acute alcohol use (moderate to high dosage), by contrast, was more consistently related with inhibition deficits [8, 9] and reduced amplitudes of inhibition-related brain potentials [10]
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