Acute alcohol does not impair attentional inhibition as measured with Stroop interference scores but impairs Stroop performance

Combined Effect of Red Wine and Mocha Pot Coffee in Mild Vascular Cognitive Impairment

OBJECTIVES

Moderate daily mocha pot coffee intake has been associated with better mood and cognition in patients with mild vascular cognitive impairment (VCI). Similarly, moderate red wine consumption has shown protective effects on cognitive disorders, including Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia. The aim of this study was to explore the synergistic relation between red wine and coffee intake on mood and cognitive status in mild VCI patients at risk for dementia.

METHODS

A total of 300 non-demented older patients with mild VCI were asked for coffee and red wine consumption and administered with the 17-items Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS), the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), and the Stroop Color-Word Interference Test (Stroop T), as well as the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and the Instrumental ADL to measure their mood status, cognitive performance, and functional independence. Linear regression models were used to test the association between variables.

RESULTS

Moderate wine drinkers tended to show the best Stroop T score at any level of coffee consumption; conversely, heavy wine consumers performed worse at the Stroop T, especially in patients reporting high coffee intake. Moderate drinkers of both coffee and wine showed the lowest HDRS scores. Finally, a progressive increase in MMSE score was evident with increasing coffee consumption, which peaks when combined with a moderate wine consumption.

CONCLUSIONS

Daily mocha pot coffee and red wine intake seem to be synergistically associated with global cognition, executive functioning, and mood status in patients with mild VCI; the association was not linear, resulting in a protective direction for moderate intake and detrimental for heavy consumption. Future studies are needed to further corroborate the present findings and the potential long-term protective effects of these dietary compounds over time.

Using naltrexone to validate a human laboratory test system to screen new medications for alcoholism (TESMA)- a randomized clinical trial

This registered clinical trial sought to validate a laboratory test system devised to screen medications for alcoholism treatment (TESMA) under different contingencies of alcohol reinforcement. Forty-six nondependent, but at least medium-risk drinkers were given the opportunity to earn intravenous infusions of ethanol, or saline, as rewards for work in a progressive-ratio paradigm. Work demand pattern and alcohol exposure dynamics were devised to achieve a gradual shift from low-demand work for alcohol (WFA) permitting quickly increasing breath alcohol concentrations (BrAC) to high-demand WFA, which could only decelerate an inevitable decrease of the previously earned BrAC. Thereby, the reward contingency changed, modeling different drinking motivations. The experiment was repeated after at least 7 days of randomized, double-blinded treatment with naltrexone, escalated to 50 mg/d, or placebo. Subjects treated with naltrexone reduced their cumulative WFA (cWFA) slightly more than participants receiving placebo. This difference was not statistically significant in the preplanned analysis of the entire 150 min of self-administration, i.e., our primary endpoint (p = 0.471, Cohen's d = 0.215). Naltrexone serum levels correlated with change in cWFA (r = -0.53; p = 0.014). Separate exploratory analyses revealed that naltrexone significantly reduced WFA during the first, but not the second half of the experiment (Cohen's d = 0.643 and 0.14, respectively). Phase-dependent associations of WFA with changes in subjective stimulation, wellbeing and desire for alcohol suggested that the predominant reinforcement of WFA was positive during the first phase only, and might have been negative during the second. We conclude that the TESMA is a safe and practical method. It bears the potential to quickly and efficiently screen new drugs for their efficacy to attenuate positively reinforced alcohol consumption. It possibly also provides a condition of negative reinforcement, and for the first time provides experimental evidence suggesting that naltrexone's effect might depend on reward contingency.

High vagally mediated resting-state heart rate variability is associated with superior working memory function

Background

Heart rate variability (HRV), a cardiac vagal tone indicator, has been proven to predict performance on some cognitive tasks that rely on the prefrontal cortex. However, the relationship between vagal tone and working memory remains understudied. This study explores the link between vagal tone and working memory function, combined with behavioral tasks and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

Methods

A total of 42 undergraduate students were tested for 5-min resting-state HRV to obtain the root mean square of successive differences (rMSSD) data, and then divided into high and low vagal tone groups according to the median of rMSSD data. The two groups underwent the n-back test, and fNIRS was used to measure the neural activity in the test state. ANOVA and the independent sample t-test were performed to compare group mean differences, and the Pearson correlation coefficient was used for correlation analysis.

Results

The high vagal tone group had a shorter reaction time, higher accuracy, lower inverse efficiency score, and lower oxy-Hb concentration in the bilateral prefrontal cortex in the working memory tasks state. Furthermore, there were associations between behavioral performance, oxy-Hb concentration, and resting-state rMSSD.

Conclusion

Our findings suggest that high vagally mediated resting-state HRV is associated with working memory performance. High vagal tone means a higher efficiency of neural resources, beneficial to presenting a better working memory function.

The Drunk Utilitarian Revisited: Does Alcohol Really Increase Utilitarianism in Moral Judgment?

The "drunk utilitarian" phenomenon suggests that people are more likely to accept harm for the greater good when they are under the influence of alcohol. This phenomenon conflicts with the ideas that (a) acceptance of pro-sacrificial harm requires inhibitory control of automatic emotional responses to the idea of causing harm and (b) alcohol impairs inhibitory control. This preregistered experiment aimed to provide deeper insights into the effects of alcohol on moral judgments by using a formal modeling approach to disentangle three factors in moral dilemma judgments and by distinguishing between instrumental harm and impartial beneficence as two distinct dimensions of utilitarian psychology. Despite the use of a substantially larger sample and higher doses of alcohol compared with the ones in prior studies, alcohol had no significant effect on moral judgments. The results pose a challenge to the idea that alcohol increases utilitarianism in moral judgments.

L-DOPA administration shifts the stability-flexibility balance towards attentional capture by distractors during a visual search task

RATIONALE

The cognitive control dilemma describes the necessity to balance two antagonistic modes of attention: stability and flexibility. Stability refers to goal-directed thought, feeling, or action and flexibility refers to the complementary ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Their balance is thought to be maintained by neurotransmitters such as dopamine, most likely in a U-shaped rather than linear manner. However, in humans, studies on the stability-flexibility balance using a dopaminergic agent and/or measurement of brain dopamine are scarce.

OBJECTIVE

The study aimed to investigate the causal involvement of dopamine in the stability-flexibility balance and the nature of this relationship in humans.

METHODS

Distractibility was assessed as the difference in reaction time (RT) between distractor and non-distractor trials in a visual search task. In a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover study, 65 healthy participants performed the task under placebo and a dopamine precursor (L-DOPA). Using ¹⁸F-DOPA-PET, dopamine availability in the striatum was examined at baseline to investigate its relationship to the RT distractor effect and to the L-DOPA-induced change of the RT distractor effect.

RESULTS

There was a pronounced RT distractor effect in the placebo session that increased under L-DOPA. Neither the RT distractor effect in the placebo session nor the magnitude of its L-DOPA-induced increase were related to baseline striatal dopamine.

CONCLUSIONS

L-DOPA administration shifted the stability-flexibility balance towards attentional capture by distractors, suggesting causal involvement of dopamine. This finding is consistent with current theories of prefrontal cortex dopamine function. Current data can neither confirm nor falsify the inverted U-shaped function hypothesis with regard to cognitive control.