Alcohol affects emotion through cognition

Determining how cognition and emotion interact is pivotal to an understandi ng of human behavior and its disorders. Available data suggest that changes in emotional reactivity and behavior associated with drinking are intertwi ned with alcohol's effects on cognitive processing, In the study reported h ere, we demonstrated that alcohol dampens anticipatory fear and response in hibition in human participants not by directly suppressing subcortical emot ion centers, as posited by traditional tension-reduction theories, but inst ead by impairing cognitive-processing capacity. During intoxication, reduct ions in fear response (assessed via startle potentiation) occurred only und er dual-stimulus conditions, and coincided with reduced attentional process ing of threat cues as evidenced by brain response (assessed via P3 event-re lated potentials). The results are consistent with higher cortical mediatio n of alcohol's effects on fear and illustrate more broadly how disruption o f a cognitive process can lead to alterations in emotional reactivity and a daptive behavior.