Herman, Aleksandra M, Critchley, Hugo D and Duka, Theodora (2018) Binge drinking is associated with attenuated frontal and parietal activation during successful response inhibition in fearful context. European Journal of Neuroscience. ISSN 0953-816X

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Abstract

Binge drinking is associated with increased impulsivity and altered emotional processing. The current study investigated, in a group of university students who differed in their level of binge drinking, whether the ability to inhibit a pre-potent response and to delay gratification is disrupted in the presence of emotional context. We further tested whether functional connectivity within intrinsic resting-state networks was associated with alcohol use. Higher incidence of binge drinking was associated with enhanced activation of the lateral occipital cortex, angular gyrus, the left frontal pole during successful response inhibition irrespective of emotional context. This observation suggests a compensatory mechanism. However, higher binge drinking attenuated frontal and parietal activation during successful response inhibition within a fearful context, indicating the selective emotional facilitation of inhibitory control. Similarly, higher binge drinking was associated with attenuated frontopolar activation when choosing a delayed reward over an immediate reward within the fearful, relative to the neutral, context. Resting-state functional data analysis revealed that binge drinking decreased coupling between right supramarginal gyrus and Ventral Attention Network, indicating alcohol-associated disruption of functional connectivity within brain substrates directing attention. Together, our results suggest that binge drinking makes response inhibition more effortful, yet emotional (more arousing) contexts may mitigate this; disrupted functional connectivity between regions underlying adaptive attentional control, is a likely mechanism underlying these response inhibition effects associated with binge drinking.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	fMRI, Stop Signal Task, delay discounting, alcohol, functional connectivity
Schools and Departments:	Brighton and Sussex Medical School > Neuroscience School of Psychology > Psychology
Research Centres and Groups:	Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science Sussex Addiction Research and Intervention Centre (SARIC)
Depositing User:	Aleksandra Maria Herman
Date Deposited:	21 Aug 2018 17:51
Last Modified:	29 Oct 2018 16:30
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/78043

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