DIFFERENTIAL-EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL ON THE CORTICAL PROCESSING OF FOREIGNAND NATIVE LANGUAGE

The effect of alcohol (ethanol) on cortical processing of Finnish vs. English words in Finnish-speaking subjects was studied by recording au ditory event-related potentials in 10 subjects who had started studyin g English at the age of 9-10 years. At the beginning of the block of 1 00 words, the subject heard an introductory sentence. Half of the word s completed the sentence well and the other half did not. The subject pressed a reaction key immediately after hearing a proper word. After the control condition, the subject ingested alcohol (1 ml/kg). Alcohol attenuated the amplitude of N100 to both Finnish and English words, t his attenuation being significantly stronger for English than for Finn ish words. The early differential effect of alcohol suggests that lang uage-specific information is extracted in the cortex already approxima tely 100 ms from the word onset. The results are in line with animal e xperiments demonstrating that alcohol selectively affects the activity of single units involved in newer forms of behavior. (C) 1998 Elsevie r Science B.V.