Effects of alcoholism severity and smoking on executive neurocognitive function

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Glass, J., Buu, A., Adams, K., Nigg, J., Puttler, L., Jester, J., & Zucker, R. (2009). Effects of alcoholism severity and smoking on executive neurocognitive function. Addiction, 104(1), 38-48. doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2008.02415.x. Retrieved from EBSCO.

In Chapter 15 we discuss in more depth the concepts, components, and principles in cognition, beyond that of learning and memory. We also discuss in more detail the biological and neurophysiological processes that underlie cognition. Also of importance to take away from this chapter are not only points about how our brain thinks, but events, drugs, deficits, and other things that inhibits how we think. For instance, we learned in chapter 8 that psychotic drugs can definitely affect how we perceive, think, and move. As we also know, chronic use of a specific drug produces neurological and biological changes that are often detrimental to our health and lifestyle if the behavior is not reversed. One example in particular is that of alcohol. Previous studies, as cited in this article, have shown that alcoholics have deficits in cognition. These impairments range from memory, processing visual sensations, to higher cognitive functions such as problem solving and making judgments. Cigarettes serve as another example of drug that can cause neurological impairments. The researchers chose to study the combination of both chronic alcohol abuse and cigarette smoking for two reasons: 1) cigarette smoking occurs at higher rates in alcoholism, and 2) the literature has ignored the combined effects of these. The study was a longitudinal design that compared alcoholic men to nonalcoholic men across 12 years. The used various neuropsychological measures consisting of tests of cognitive ability. They also measured reaction-time. They used the collective measurements to define their variable of executive functioning. As expected, both of these habits had an inverse relationship with the overall executive functioning scores; this relationship was effective in using alcohol and smoking habits to predict executive functioning in regression analysis. Interestingly enough, though, researchers found that IQ played an interaction with the effect of alcoholism on cognitive abilities, but IQ did not interact with smoking habits to affect reaction speeds. Alcoholism was also found to have a negative relationship with education, IQ. Alcohol was also related to ADHD and depressive symptoms, while smoking was not. This study shows that future research should also consider the robust findings in smoking when dealing with the cognitive function in alcoholics, in that the cognitive effects of smoking seem to be more localized than those of alcohol use. Another new and exciting finding in this study is a variation of something that many of us have been taught in drug-prevention lessons; alcohol and other drug use is likely to diminish your inhibitions. This study found neurological evidence and showed an actual relationship between alcoholism and the performance on a task requiring participants to stop or inhibit a response. Poor performance on this measure may indicate, say the researchers, that impulsive behaviors may make matters worse both in cognition and treatment in alcoholism patients.