task performance, there was an ethanol-induced attenuation of the task-related frontally dominant theta increase; this effect was modest (Boha et al., 2009). Alcohol dose had an activating effect on autonomic measures of heart rate and electrodermal activity, and changes in nonlinear measures – omega complexity and synchronization likelihood – indicate increased synchrony in the theta band corresponding to increased working memory effort (Molnar et al., 2009). Moderate alcohol consumption caused spatiotemporal changes to conflict in both early and late processing stages during a Stroop task, and attenuated total event-related theta power, suggesting that alcohol-induced deficits in cognitive control may result from theta suppression in the executive network (Kovacevic et al., 2012). Slower reaction time was associated with attenuated theta power that was attributed to anterior cingulate cortex, indicating an impairment in top-down control of motor preparation and execution. Alcohol significantly increased theta activity in subjects who were engaged in performing an attentional motor task of simulated automobile driving. Hence these results suggest that an alcohol-induced impairment of top-down strategic processing may underlie poor self-control, which in turn may affect drinking (Laukka et al., 1995).
