Electrophysiological correlates of emotional crossmodal processing in binge drinking

Abstract

Emotional crossmodal integration (i.e., multisensorial decoding of emotions) is a crucial process that ensures adaptive social behaviors and responses to the environment. Recent evidence suggests that in binge drinking-an excessive alcohol consumption pattern associated with psychological and cerebral deficits-crossmodal integration is preserved at the behavioral level. Although some studies have suggested brain modifications during affective processing in binge drinking, nothing is known about the cerebral correlates of crossmodal integration. In the current study, we asked 53 university students (17 binge drinkers, 17 moderate drinkers, 19 nondrinkers) to perform an emotional crossmodal task while their behavioral and neurophysiological responses were recorded. Participants had to identify happiness and anger in three conditions (unimodal, crossmodal congruent, crossmodal incongruent) and two modalities (face and/or voice). Binge drinkers did not significantly differ from moderate drinkers and nondrinkers at the behavioral level. However, widespread cerebral modifications were found at perceptual (N100) and mainly at decisional (P3b) stages in binge drinkers, indexed by slower brain processing and stronger activity. These cerebral modifications were mostly related to anger processing and crossmodal integration. This study highlights higher electrophysiological activity in the absence of behavioral deficits, which could index a potential compensation process in binge drinkers. In line with results found in severe alcohol-use disorders, these electrophysiological findings show modified anger processing, which might have a deleterious impact on social functioning. Moreover, this study suggests impaired crossmodal integration at early stages of alcohol-related disorders.

Disrupted Fear and Sadness Recognition in Binge Drinking: A Combined Group and Individual Analysis

“…In the current approach, combining analyses at group and individual levels, results indeed indicate that BD have specific difficulties for the recognition of fear and sadness facial expressions but also that BD do not present impairments for some emotional categories (i.e., anger and disgust). This is important as anger‐processing deficits were identified as a central feature in SAUDs (see Bora and Zorlu, ; for a meta‐analysis) and as this proposal had obtained preliminary empirical support in binge drinking through identification tasks (i.e., requiring the ability to identify, as quickly as possible, the emotional content presented among 2 categories; Lannoy et al., ; Maurage et al., ). The current results thus reinforce the need to largely open this research field in binge drinking, but also call for direct comparisons between BD and SAUDs patients (i.e., to identify the differences and similarities in these 2 consumption patterns) and longitudinal data (e.g., to explore whether the duration or changes in alcohol consumption may be related to differences in the ability to recognize emotions).…”

“…This null result could be explained by a lack of statistical power due to a small sample size (23 BD and 23 controls; Lannoy et al., ) but also potentially by an important heterogeneity regarding emotional performance in BD. At the electrophysiological level, the components associated with the processing of emotional prosody (Maurage et al., ), emotional cross‐modal integration (Lannoy et al., ), and affective pictures (Connell et al., ) were found to be disrupted in binge drinking. The affective modulation of event‐related theta oscillations was also reduced in BD during the processing of emotional pictures (Huang et al., ).…”

“…However, in binge drinking, no study explored the variation of the deficit across emotions. Preliminary studies suggested a specific difficulty for the processing of negative stimuli (Connell et al., ; Lannoy et al., ; Maurage et al., ), while others underlined impairments for both positive and negative valences (Huang et al., ; Maurage et al., ).…”

Behavioral and Cerebral Impairments Associated with Binge Drinking in Youth: A Critical Review

“…Other findings were observed through neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies. At the electrophysiological level, the event-related potential (ERP) components associated with the processing of emotional human voices (Maurage et al, 2009) and with emotional cross-modal integration (Lannoy et al, 2018c), as well as the images associated with negative valence (Connell, Patton & McKillop, 2015), were disrupted in binge drinkers. Moreover, the affective modulation of event-related theta oscillations was reduced in binge drinkers during the processing of emotional images (Huang et al, 2017).…”

“…Cerebral modifications during emotional processing, but no strong behavioral impairment (Huang et al, 2017; Maurage et al, 2009), notably for cross-modal integration (Lannoy et al, 2018c).…”