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

in Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research (2019), 43(9), 1978-1985

BACKGROUND: Binge drinking is a harmful pattern of alcohol consumption, associated with cognitive and cerebral impairments. Indeed, various cognitive processes have been identified as disrupted in binge ... [more ▼]

BACKGROUND: Binge drinking is a harmful pattern of alcohol consumption, associated with cognitive and cerebral impairments. Indeed, various cognitive processes have been identified as disrupted in binge drinking, ranging from perceptive to executive functions, but emotional processes have conversely been little investigated. Particularly, it is unclear to what extent binge drinkers (BD) present difficulties to recognize and categorize the emotions expressed by other individuals. Such an exploration would, however, offer a more comprehensive view of the deficits associated with alcohol-related disorders and potentially involved in the maintenance of this harmful habit. METHODS: Fifty-two BD and 42 control participants performed an emotional task assessing the ability to recognize 6 basic emotions (i.e., anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness). Accuracy score and detection threshold were collected for each emotion. To explore the extent of emotion recognition difficulties, 2 analyses were conducted: (i) classical repeated measures analyses of variance, to compare groups' performance, and (ii) multiple single-case analyses (i.e., Crawford's t-tests), to determine the percentage of BD presenting genuine emotion recognition deficits. Correlations were also performed between alcohol consumption characteristics and emotional recognition scores. RESULTS: BD presented reduced performance for the recognition of fear and sadness. Multiple single cases highlighted that these deficits respectively concerned 21.15 and 15.38% of the binge drinking sample, and the relation between binge drinking and reduced sadness detection was supported by correlational analyses. CONCLUSIONS: These findings show that binge drinking is associated with a disrupted processing of emotional stimuli. By identifying heterogeneity in the impairments presented by BD, the present results also underline the usefulness of a combined group and individual approach. [less ▲]

Attentional alterations in alcohol dependence are underpinned by specific executive control deficits.

in Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research (2014), 38(7), 2105-12

BACKGROUND: Attentional biases and deficits play a central role in the development and maintenance of alcohol dependence, but the underlying attentional processes accounting for these deficits have been ... [more ▼]

BACKGROUND: Attentional biases and deficits play a central role in the development and maintenance of alcohol dependence, but the underlying attentional processes accounting for these deficits have been very little explored. Importantly, the differential alterations across the 3 attentional networks (alerting, orienting, and executive control) remain unclear in this pathology. METHODS: Thirty recently detoxified alcohol-dependent individuals and 30 paired controls completed the Attention Network Test, which allow exploring the attentional alterations specifically related to the 3 attentional networks. RESULTS: Alcohol-dependent individuals presented globally delayed reaction times compared to controls. More centrally, they showed a differential deficit across attention networks, with a preserved performance for alerting and orienting networks but impaired executive control (p < 0.001). This deficit was not related to psychopathological comorbidities but was positively correlated with the duration of alcohol-dependence habits, the number of previous detoxification treatments and the mean alcohol consumption before detoxification. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that attentional alterations in alcohol dependence are centrally due to a specific alteration of executive control. Intervention programs focusing on executive components of attention should be promoted, and these results support the frontal lobe hypothesis. [less ▲]