News Section | Mental Health
Drinkers ‘know they’re making mistakes, but just don’t care about them’
It was previously known that a few drinks could dull the brain ‘alarm’ that monitors mistakes, but a new study has revealed that drinkers are still aware of what they’re doing, but care less about them.
“When people make mistakes, activity in a part of the brain responsible for monitoring behavior increases, essentially sending an alarm signal to other parts of the brain indicating that something went wrong,” said Bruce Bartholow, associate professor of psychology in the University of Missouri College of Arts and Science.
“Our study isn’t the first to show that alcohol reduces this alarm signal, but contrary to previous studies, our study shows that alcohol doesn’t reduce your awareness of mistakes – it reduces how much you care about making those mistakes,” he added.
Bartholow and his team measured the brain activity of 67 participants, ages 21-35, as they completed a challenging computer task designed to elicit some errors.
About one-third of the participants drank alcohol, while the others drank non-alcoholic drinks or placebo drinks they thought contained alcohol.
The researchers also measured the participants’ mood, their accuracy and their perception of their accuracy.
They found that despite what the participants were drinking, all the participants, including those who were drinking alcohol, recognized when they had made an error.
The results indicate that alcohol’s reduction of the brain’s “alarm signal” did not occur simply because those in the alcohol group were unaware of their errors.
The researchers also found that the size of the brain’s alarm signal was strongly associated with participants’ mood at the time of the test.
Bartholow said the findings are an important step forward in understanding how alcohol’s effects on the brain contribute to the kinds of mistakes and social blunders people sometimes make when they’re drunk.
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