Acute effects of alcohol on error-elicited negative affect during a cognitive control task

Influence Mechanism of the Home Advantage on Referees’ Decision-Making in Modern Football Field – A Study From Sports Neuro-Decision Science

As professional football stadiums continue to grow in popularity worldwide, fans are able to watch the game in closer proximity, but the design of professional football stadiums to shorten the distance between fans and the playing field also exacerbates the impact of the home advantage on the referee’s decision to call a penalty. Studies have confirmed the existence of the home advantage and found that experienced referees can reduce the impact of this interference, but the neural mechanisms behind this phenomenon have not been adequately investigated. In this study, we designed a soccer referee decision making task based on a home field effect scenario in a real soccer game, and used event-related potentials (ERPs) to compare the decision making and EEG differences between individuals with different experience levels when faced with foul actions under spectator noise interference. The experiments showed that individuals with different experience levels triggered a significant ERN EEG component when performing the penalty decision task under the home field effect factor, suggesting that the interference of the home field effect may lead referees to correct their previous decision-making behavior patterns in the penalty decision and reduce unfavorable calls against the home team. In contrast, referees with officiating experience elicited smaller ERN amplitudes compared to other subjects, suggesting that experience factors may inhibit this tendency to change behavioral patterns. This study suggests that in response to the increasing trend of professional football stadiums, policy makers should place more emphasis on enhancing the experience level of referees in the training of referees to ensure the fairness of the game.

Theta oscillatory dynamics of inhibitory control, error processing, and post-error adjustments: Neural underpinnings and alcohol-induced dysregulation

BACKGROUND

Alcohol intoxication impairs inhibitory control, resulting in disinhibited, impulsive behavior. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays an essential role in a range of executive functions and is sensitive to the effects of alcohol, which contributes to the top-down cognitive dysregulation. This study used a multimodal approach to examine the acute effects of alcohol on the neural underpinnings of inhibitory control, inhibition failures, and neurobehavioral optimization as reflected in trial-to-trial dynamics of post-error adjustments.

METHODS

Adult social drinkers served as their own controls by participating in the Go/NoGo task during acute alcohol and placebo conditions in a multi-session, counterbalanced design. Distributed source modeling of the magnetoencephalographic signal was combined with structural magnetic resonance imaging to characterize the spatio-temporal dynamics of inhibitory control in the time-frequency domain.

RESULTS

Successful response inhibition (NoGo) elicited right-lateralized event-related theta power (4 to 7 Hz). Errors elicited a short-latency increase in theta power in the dorsal (dACC), followed by activity in the rostral (rACC), which may underlie an affective "oh, no!" orienting response to errors. Error-related theta in the dACC was associated with subsequent activity of the motor areas on the first post-error trial, suggesting the occurrence of post-error output adjustments. Importantly, a gradual increase of the dACC theta across post-error trials closely tracked improvements in accuracy under placebo, which may reflect cognitive control engagement to optimize response accuracy. In contrast, alcohol increased NoGo commission errors, dysregulated theta during correct NoGo withholding, and abolished the post-error theta enhancement of cognitive control.

CONCLUSIONS

Confirming the sensitivity of frontal theta to inhibitory control and error monitoring, the results support functional and temporal dissociation along the dorso-rostral axis of the ACC and the deleterious effects of alcohol on the frontal circuitry subserving top-down regulation. Over time, alcohol-induced disinhibition may give rise to compulsive drinking and contribute to alcohol misuse.