Alcohol Lowers Ability to Detect Errors
Even a Few Drinks Makes Problem Solving Harder
Nov. 8, 2002 -- Alcohol may not only impair your judgment, but researchers now say that even a few drinks could make you less likely to catch your own mistakes. A new study shows that moderate amounts of alcohol can interfere with the brain's own quality-control system and offers new clues about how alcohol affects the brain.
The study appears in the Nov. 7 issue of Science.
Dutch researchers compared the effects of low and high doses of alcohol (equivalent to blood alcohol concentrations of 0.4% and 1.0% respectively) to a placebo dose on the performance of people asked to complete a simple error-detection task. The task consisted of responding to the direction of a target arrow and ignoring a distracting arrow, which may have been pointing in another direction than the target arrow. The participants performed the task under each dosage level without knowing which dose they got.
Researchers also measured electrical activity in a part of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is responsible for detecting flaws and errors in thinking.
They found that even a few drinks altered the activity in this area of the brain. Under the influence of alcohol, the participants were not able to detect errors in their processing, which also meant that they were unable to make adjustments to their performance.
Study author K. Richard Ridderinkhof, of the University of Amsterdam, and colleagues say the study suggests that the consumption of alcohol compromises a person's performance by lowering the brain's ability to detect its own slip-ups.
But they say more research is needed to determine how alcohol creates this effect. -->
Alcohol Lowers Ability to Detect Errors
Even a Few Drinks Makes Problem Solving Harder
Nov. 8, 2002 -- Alcohol may not only impair your judgment, but researchers now say that even a few drinks could make you less likely to catch your own mistakes. A new study shows that moderate amounts of alcohol can interfere with the brain's own quality-control system and offers new clues about how alcohol affects the brain.
The study appears in the Nov. 7 issue of Science.
Dutch researchers compared the effects of low and high doses of alcohol (equivalent to blood alcohol concentrations of 0.4% and 1.0% respectively) to a placebo dose on the performance of people asked to complete a simple error-detection task. The task consisted of responding to the direction of a target arrow and ignoring a distracting arrow, which may have been pointing in another direction than the target arrow. The participants performed the task under each dosage level without knowing which dose they got.
Researchers also measured electrical activity in a part of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is responsible for detecting flaws and errors in thinking.
They found that even a few drinks altered the activity in this area of the brain. Under the influence of alcohol, the participants were not able to detect errors in their processing, which also meant that they were unable to make adjustments to their performance.
Study author K. Richard Ridderinkhof, of the University of Amsterdam, and colleagues say the study suggests that the consumption of alcohol compromises a person's performance by lowering the brain's ability to detect its own slip-ups.
But they say more research is needed to determine how alcohol creates this effect. -->