During Ascending and Descending Limbs of the Blood Alcohol Concentration Curve

Blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) as low as 0.04 mg/ml impair cognitive and visual tasks such as planning, working memory, blurred vision, and spatial awareness. Neuropsychological tests, such as the trail making test (TMT), have been shown to assess the severity of impairment. Prior research in t...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Lauren Ratcliffe, Sabrina McAllister, Jacob Johnson, Paige Dzindolet
Format:	Article
Language:	English
Published:	Appalachian State University Honors College 2018-10-01
Series:	Impulse: The Premier Undergraduate Neuroscience Journal
Subjects:	working memory blurred vision and spatial awareness. Neuropsychological tests such as the trail making test (TMT) have been shown to assess the severity of impairment. Prior research in this area has exclusively assessed these impairments via driving performance. This study aimed to investigate neurocognitive impairments associated with varying BAC levels utilizing a computerized trail making test (cTMT) which reduces practice effects via randomized stimuli location. The influences of alcohol were tested over the variables of total time median latency and version (Trail A Trail B). Twenty-six participants (8 male 18 female) with a minimum age of 21 years were recruited. Participants were randomly selected to be in the placebo (n=7) or the experimental group (n=19). The experimental group performed the cTMT at four target BAC points: baseline (0.00 mg/ml) ascending (0.06 mg/ml) peak (0.08 mg/ml) and descending (0.06 mg/ml). While participants who received alcohol tended to report themselves at a lower BAC than they were there was no significant difference between perceived and actual BAC. Additionally alcohol did not significantly affect performance on the cTMT for the tested levels. The cTMT detected impairments during the complex task (Trail B) but not in the simpler task (Trail A) thus indicating cognitive inflexibility and deficits in working memory. Future studies could attempt to augment BAC levels to at least 0.10 mg/ml in order to examine more distinct effects of alcohol on the specific cognitive tasks required by the cTMT. Abbreviations: BAC – Blood Alcohol Concentration; CNS – Central Nervous System; cTMT – computerized Trail Making Test; GABA – Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid; NMDA - N-Methyl-D- Aspartate; PI – Principle Investigator; TMT – Trail Making Test Keywords: Executive Functioning Trail Making Test Visuomotor Young Adult Executive Functioning
Online Access:	https://impulse.appstate.edu/articles/2018/during-ascending-and-descending-limbs-blood-alcohol-concentration-curve

Internet

https://impulse.appstate.edu/articles/2018/during-ascending-and-descending-limbs-blood-alcohol-concentration-curve

During Ascending and Descending Limbs of the Blood Alcohol Concentration Curve

Internet

Similar Items