Search resultsEffects of ethanol on anti-saccade task performance
Title
Effects of ethanol on anti-saccade task performance
Publication type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2003
Authors
Journal
Experimental Brain Research
Volume
150
Issue
1
Pagination
68 - 74
Date published
2003
ISBN
00144819 (ISSN)
Keywords
Action potential, Adult, alcohol, alcohol consumption, article, controlled study, error, Ethanol, event related potential, Evoked Potentials, eye fixation, Eye Movements, eye tracking, Fixation, Ocular, human, human experiment, Humans, Inhibition, male, Models, Neurological, Neural Inhibition, Neurons, normal human, Ocular Motility Disorders, priority journal, psychomotor performance, reaction time, Saccades, Saccadic eye movement, stimulus response, superior colliculus, task performance, Visual Pathways, visual stimulation
Abstract
It has been shown that saccade-related neurons in the superior colliculus (SC) display an increased level of prestimulus activity and a higher stimulus-related burst in action potentials preceding direction errors in the anti-saccade task compared with correct anti-saccades. From this, it has been hypothesized that errors occur when the incoming visual signal in the SC passes a threshold and triggers a reflexive saccade. This hypothesis predicts that an attenuated visual signal will reduce the number of direction errors. Since ethanol has been shown to have a suppressive effect on cortical visual event-related potentials (ERPs), the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of moderate ethanol consumption on anti-saccade performance. Under both placebo and ethanol conditions, we recorded ERPs and measured eye movements in male subjects during the performance of an anti-saccade task in which the fixation point disappeared 200 ms prior to stimulus presentation. Compared with the placebo condition, we found in the ethanol condition: (1) a decrease in ERP amplitudes during the gap period and after stimulus presentation, (2) an increase in the latencies of anti-saccades, and (3) a decrease in the percentage of direction errors. These data demonstrate the effects of ethanol on anti-saccade task performance and provide further support for the hypothesis that errors in the anti-saccade task are triggered by the incoming visual signal.