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Separate and joint effects of alcohol and caffeine on conflict monitoring and adaptation

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Abstract

Rationale

Caffeine is commonly believed to offset the acute effects of alcohol, but some evidence suggests that cognitive processes remain impaired when caffeine and alcohol are coadministered.

Objectives

No previous study has investigated the separate and joint effects of alcohol and caffeine on conflict monitoring and adaptation, processes thought to be critical for self-regulation. This was the purpose of the current study.

Methods

Healthy, young adult social drinkers recruited from the community completed a flanker task after consuming one of four beverages in a 2 × 2 experimental design: Alcohol + caffeine, alcohol + placebo caffeine, placebo alcohol + caffeine, or placebo alcohol + placebo caffeine. Accuracy, response time, and the amplitude of the N2 component of the event-related potential (ERP), a neural index of conflict monitoring, were examined as a function of whether or not conflict was present (i.e., whether or not flankers were compatible with the target) on both the previous trial and the current trial.

Results

Alcohol did not abolish conflict monitoring or adaptation. Caffeine eliminated conflict adaptation in sequential trials but also enhanced neural conflict monitoring. The combined effect of alcohol and caffeine was apparent only in how previous conflict affected the neural conflict monitoring response.

Conclusions

Together, the findings suggest that caffeine leads to exaggeration of attentional resource utilization, which could provide short-term benefits but lead to problems conserving resources for when they are most needed.

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Notes

  1. An additional 48 individuals participated in this study, but their data are not included in this report because they were assigned to beverage conditions (e.g., alcohol with no caffeine placebo) that are not relevant for testing the current hypotheses. Note, too, that despite use of the same behavioral task and alcohol dosing procedure, the current study is based on an entirely different sample than the one used for the study reported in Bailey et al. (2014).

  2. Note that including N2 data from a broader array of electrodes (see Bailey et al. 2014) does not change any of the findings, and thus for simplicity, we opted to focus analyses on the sites where N2 effects were most pronounced.

  3. Given that this method might not adequately eliminate skew from the RT distributions, RT analyses were replicated using natural log-transformed data. These analyses produced findings virtually identical to those we report, and therefore the trimmed, untransformed analyses were retained for ease of interpretation.

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Acknowledgments

Support for this research was provided by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grants P60 AA011998 Sub# 5978 (to Denis M. McCarthy and Bruce D. Bartholow) and T32 AA013526 (to Kenneth J. Sher). Preparation of this manuscript was supported by grant R01 AA020970 (to Bruce D. Bartholow).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, 210 McAlester Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Kira Bailey, Michael T. Amlung, David H. Morris, Mason H. Price, Curtis Von Gunten, Denis M. McCarthy & Bruce D. Bartholow

  2. Midwest Alcoholism Research Center, Columbia, MO, USA

    Denis M. McCarthy & Bruce D. Bartholow

Authors
  1. Kira Bailey
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  2. Michael T. Amlung
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  3. David H. Morris
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  4. Mason H. Price
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  5. Curtis Von Gunten
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  6. Denis M. McCarthy
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  7. Bruce D. Bartholow
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Correspondence to Denis M. McCarthy or Bruce D. Bartholow.

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Bailey, K., Amlung, M.T., Morris, D.H. et al. Separate and joint effects of alcohol and caffeine on conflict monitoring and adaptation. Psychopharmacology 233, 1245–1255 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-016-4208-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-016-4208-y

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