Effects of alcohol on tests of executive functioning in men and women: A dose response examination.

Abstract

Alcohol has been shown to affect performance on tasks associated with executive functioning. However, studies in this area have generally been limited to a single dose or gender or have used small sample sizes. The purpose of this study was to provide a more nuanced and systematic examination of alcohol's effects on commonly used tests of executive functioning at multiple dosages in both men and women. Research volunteers (91 women and 94 men) were randomly assigned to one of four drink conditions (alcohol doses associated with target blood alcohol concentrations of .000%, .050%, .075% and .100%). Participants then completed three tasks comprising two domains of executive functioning: two set shifting tasks, the Trail Making Test and a computerized version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, and a response inhibition task, the GoStop Impulsivity Paradigm. Impaired performance on set shifting tasks was found at the .100% and .075% dosages, but alcohol intoxication did not impair performance on the GoStop. No gender effects emerged. Thus, alcohol negatively affects set shifting at moderately high levels of intoxication in both men and women, likely due to alcohol's interference with prefrontal cortex function. Although it is well-established that alcohol negatively affects response inhibition as measured by auditory stop-signal tasks, alcohol does not appear to exert a negative effect on response inhibition as measured by the GoStop, a visual stop-signal task.

Alcohol Doesn’t Always Compromise Cognitive Function: Exploring Moderate Doses in Young Adults

“…For example, TMT performance in populations similar to the current study's sample seems to be largely unaffected by subintoxicating BrACs (Dry et al, 2012;Guillot et al, 2010). However, exceptions include TMT-A facilitation observed at sufficiently low BrACs (~30 mg/ dl; Gilbertson et al, 2009) and poorer TMT-B performance reported at concentrations approaching legal intoxication (~70 mg/dl; Guillot et al, 2010). Given the current study's BrACs at the time of TMT administration, our results lay within this distribution.…”

“…Examining reports with similar samples and identical tasks, and evaluating outcomes with reference to BrAC at the time of task administration, rather than targeted peak, might yield a clearer picture. For example, TMT performance in populations similar to the current study's sample seems to be largely unaffected by subintoxicating BrACs (Dry et al, 2012;Guillot et al, 2010). However, exceptions include TMT-A facilitation observed at sufficiently low BrACs (~30 mg/ dl; Gilbertson et al, 2009) and poorer TMT-B performance reported at concentrations approaching legal intoxication (~70 mg/dl; Guillot et al, 2010).…”

“…Using a variety of cognitive tasks, low-and moderatedose alcohol, relative to placebo, has produced deficient Field et al, 2010;Friedman et al, 2011), facilitated (Gilbertson et al, 2009;Sklar et al, 2012), and similar (Dry et al, 2012;Guillot et al, 2010;Milani & Curran, 2000) performance. Contradictory findings are also reported for identical tasks and similar alcohol concentrations (e.g., Dry et al, 2012, vs. Gilbertson et al, 2009.…”

Model-Based and Model-Free Decisions in Alcohol Dependence

“…Interestingly, however, alcohol expectancy [23] and acute alcohol administration [24] did reduce the effect of satiety devaluation, suggesting that alcohol can specifically impair goal-directed decisions. Indeed, the goal-directed system is likely to depend on the kind of cognitive processes that are known to be impaired by alcohol [25,26]. Sjoerds et al [27] used an instructed devaluation in a slip of action tasks which involves complex relationships between stimuli, outcomes and responses.…”

Acute and Chronic Effects of Alcohol on Trail Making Test Performance Among Underage Drinkers in a Field Setting

“…Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 74, 635-641, 2013) A LCOHOL ACUTELY AFFECTS component processes of executive functioning, including planning (Montgomery et al, 2011;Peterson et al, 1990;Weissenborn and Duka, 2003), set-shifting (Guillot et al, 2010;Lyvers and Maltzman, 1991), response inhibition (Reynolds et al, 2006), and working memory (Grattan-Miscio and VogelSprott, 2005;Schweizer et al, 2006). In addition, there are residual effects of alcohol on executive function, such that chronic use of alcohol leads to defi cits in performance on tasks that measure the same constructs (Cairney et al, 2007;Fernández-Serrano et al, 2011;Green et al, 2010;Hildebrandt et al, 2004).…”