title: Increased distractibility by task-irrelevant sound changes in abstinent alcoholics.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Chronic alcoholism is accompanied by "frontal" neuropsychological deficits that include an inability to maintain focus of attention. This might be associated with pronounced involuntary attention shifting to task-irrelevant stimulus changes and, thereafter, an impaired reorienting to the relevant task. The neural abnormalities that underlie such deficits in alcoholics were explored with event-related potential (ERP) components that disclosed different phases of detection and orienting to stimulus changes.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty consecutive abstinent male alcoholics (DSM-IV) and 20 age-matched male controls (healthy social drinkers) were instructed to discriminate equiprobable 100 and 200 msec tones in a reaction-time task (RT) and to ignore occasional, either slight (7%) or wide (70%), frequency changes (hypothesized to increase RT) during an ERP measurement.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the alcoholics, we found pronounced distractibility, evidenced by a RT lag (p < 0.01) caused by deviants, that correlated (Spearman p = 0.5) with a significantly enhanced (p < 0.01) amplitude of mismatch negativity (MMN) to deviants. Significantly increased RT lag for trials subsequent to deviants (slight p < 0.001, wide p < 0.05) in the alcoholics suggested impaired reorienting to the relevant task. The MMN enhancement also predicted poorer hit rates in the alcoholics (Spearman p = 0.6-0.7). Both the MMN enhancement and pronounced distractibility correlated (Spearman p = 0.4) with an early onset of alcoholism.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Attentional deficits in the abstinent alcoholics were indicated by the increased distractibility by irrelevant sound changes. The MMN enhancement suggested that this reflects impaired neural inhibition of involuntary attention shifting, being most pronounced in early-onset alcoholics.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland. jyrki.ahveninen@helsinki.fi
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ahveninen
authors.forename: I P
authors.initials: IP
authors.lastname: Jääskeläinen
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pekkonen
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hallberg
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hietanen
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Näätänen
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schröger
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sillanaukee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000430:Alcohol Withdrawal Delirium / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology