Under frameworks such as Alcohol Myopia Theory, a body of literature has developed demonstrating how alcohol intoxication can increase behavioral risk-taking, potentially via impaired inhibition of prepotent behavioral responses. A separate area of research has shown that responses to alcohol intoxication are not homogenous across the population. Whereas most previous research has considered alcohol responses in relation to risk for alcohol use disorders, the present investigation tested whether they may additionally contribute to the acute effects of alcohol on drinking-episode-specific cognitive and behavioral consequences. We recruited 82 moderate-to-heavy drinking emerging adults to each complete 2 research protocols: a placebo-controlled, within-subject, counterbalanced alcohol challenge in a simulated bar laboratory and a 21-day, event-level self-monitoring follow-up. Replicating previous research, the alcohol challenge increased heart rate and subjective stimulant-like and sedative-like responses and impaired psychomotor performance and response inhibition. Individual differences in subjective stimulation but not sedation were significantly associated with inhibitory impairment. In the event-level follow-up, we found little evidence that alcohol responses elevated risk for adverse behavioral outcomes, although evidence was stronger that alcohol responses were associated with alcohol-induced memory blackout. Whether and how alcohol responses relate to the physiological, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of alcohol intoxication may depend on a) the quality of the response (e.g., stimulation vs. sedation), b) the type of outcome (e.g., response inhibition vs. blackout vs. behavioral risk-taking), and c) whether perceptions of alcohol-induced effects may contribute to emerging adults' evaluations of risk (e.g., driving after drinking and riding with a drinking driver). / text

Evidence suggests that slow paced diaphragmatic breathing (DB) can significantly affect prefrontal cortex functions through increasing an individual’s physiological self-regulatory capacity. The current research demonstrates the effects of paced DB on inhibitory control, which is considered to be a reliable measure of behavioral self-regulation. Eighty healthy participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (20 males and females each). Participants were instructed on either DB at a pace of six-breaths per minute (BPM) or instructions on environmental awareness and asked to breathe at 12 BPM. Following training, all participants completed a computer-based task designed to examine inhibitory processes. Physiological recordings of heart rate (HR), BPM, and HRV were collected at baseline, during the breathing training, during the cued go/no-go task, and after the cued go/no-go task. The findings demonstrated that the DB condition had significantly lower BPM, HR, and higher HRV (p’s<0.05) during active training than the environmental awareness condition. Furthermore, the DB condition performed significantly better on the measure of inhibition than the environmental awareness condition (p<0.05). The use of DB as a reliable method to increase physiological self-regulatory capacity and improve behavioral self-regulation, measured as inhibitory control, should continue to be explored.