Alcohol's effects on emotionally motivated attention, defensive reactivity and subjective anxiety during uncertain threats.

ABSTRACT: Developing a better understanding of how and under what circumstances alcohol affects the emotions, cognitions and neural functions that precede and contribute to dangerous behaviors during intoxication may help to reduce their occurrence. Alcohol intoxication has recently been shown to reduce defensive reactivity and anxiety more during uncertain vs certain threat. However, alcohol's effects on emotionally motivated attention to these threats are unknown. Alcohol may disrupt both affective response to and attentional processing of uncertain threats making intoxicated individuals less able to avoid dangerous and costly behaviors. To test this possibility, we examined the effects of a broad range of blood alcohol concentrations on 96 participants' sub-cortically mediated defensive reactivit

SUBMITTER: Bradford DE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5714195 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature