Among the early ERP components, the N100 amplitude is consistently reduced postalcohol, suggesting involvement of early sensory or attention-related process, particularly in auditory paradigms. Reporting on earlier components of the oddball task – N100 and P200 (Fig. 23.1) – greater sensitization of P2 on the ascending limb of the blood alcohol curve and faster recovery to baseline on the descending limb for both N1 and P2 in HR was seen (Cohen et al., 1998), in keeping with the differentiator model of Newlin and Thomson (1990). Some studies using visual stimuli did not report N1 amplitude reduction postalcohol (Rohrbaugh et al., 1987; Colrain et al., 1993). A preattentive component to spatial frequency (SFD80), which appears at 80 ms after the stimulus, was not affected by moderate alcohol (Kenemans et al., 2010). Alcohol was found to decrease the discrimination ability for visual contrast, resulting in reduced visual evoked potential amplitudes, but its effects on motion perception indicated impairment in visuospatial attention (Weschke and Niedeggen, 2012).
