methods rely on fundamentally different sources of signal: MEG/EEG signals reflect postsynaptic currents measured as magnetic fields and electric potentials [52], [53]. In contrast, blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal depends on hemodynamic changes, reflecting neural activity only indirectly as a result of neurovascular coupling [54]. Due to its limited temporal resolution, the BOLD signal cannot resolve differential effects on successive processing stages. Furthermore, the BOLD is sensitive to alcohol’s vasoactive properties and may not accurately represent the magnitude of the neural changes resulting from intoxication [55], [56]. Therefore, temporally sensitive methods are needed to verify alcohol’s effects on the executive network. Nevertheless, both aMEG and BOLD-fMRI results concur in showing that alcohol intoxication attenuates conflict-induced activation in ACC. Overall, this convergence of results strongly indicates that regulative functions are particularly vulnerable to moderate alcohol intoxication. Indeed, a large number of neuroimaging studies suggest that ACC subserves top-down controlled processing [22], [24], [49] in the sense of guiding behavior that is not habitual or automatic [25]. The present aMEG results further refine and extend this overall conclusion by providing insight into the successive stages of processing with respect to stimulus presentation as well as response execution. While ACC is uniquely sensitive
