Does alcohol cue inhibitory control training survive a context shift?

Abstract

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Transcranial direct current stimulation combined with alcohol cue inhibitory control training reduces the risk of early alcohol relapse: A randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial

“…Regarding the effects of ICTs, our results indicate a lack of alcohol-specific training effects on any of the behavioral data. This null result diverge from several studies [55,88,89] but echoes recent data showing no effects of ICT on alcohol consumed in the context of training (lab-based), or in another context (semi-naturalistic bar), nor on inhibitory control processes, or on alcohol cueinhibition associations, or in alcohol value [58]. Our finding was also in line with broader literature on cognitive-bias-modification interventions showing weak and inconsistent effects on substance use [52,53] (but see Ref.…”

“…Another example of behavioral intervention is an alcohol adaptation of Inhibitory Control Training (ICT), which involves training participants to respond (i.e., press a key) to neutral stimuli and withdraw their response when alcoholrelated content is displayed [55]. A single session of alcohol ICT led to a reduction in alcohol consumption ad libitum among heavy social drinkers in the laboratory, but this reduction was short-lived and easily abolished by a context shift [55e57], which explains why the clinical relevance of ICT used in monotherapy seems limited [58]. Regarding the mechanisms of action of ICT, systematically matching a No-Go response with a motivational content has the potential to improve top-down inhibitory control [59], devaluate motivational cues (i.e., to reduce its positive valence) [60,61], or reinforce automatic cue/stop associations (i.e., associative inhibition) [57,61].…”

Elevated ad libitum alcohol consumption following continuous theta burst stimulation to the left-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is partially mediated by changes in craving

“…This may suggest that while the DLPFC appears to modulate the extent to which individuals can exert control over prepotent responses, this capacity does not appear to be directly related to drinking behaviour. This contrasts with early suggestions by Field et al (2010) but appears to be consistent with a growing body of more recent contributions (Christiansen et al, 2013;Jones et al, 2018;Jones et al, 2020;McNeill et al, 2018). Present (null) findings therefore appear to undermine further the notion of a causal link between inhibition impairments and loss of volitional control over actual beverage alcohol consumption and therefore may be more consistent with theoretical models that view inhibitory control as a more multifaceted construct that is embedded within wider cognitive processing networks (Verbruggen, 2016).…”

Pilot testing of an adaptive, individualized inhibitory control training for binge drinking: first evidence on feasibility, acceptance, and efficacy

“…Finally, adapting the task to the drinking behavior may increase the participants’ compliance. Previous studies using extended trainings are characterized by using multiple similar sessions (e.g., Jones et al, 2020 ; Scholten et al, 2021 ). However, individual adaptation of the difficulty may be useful to promote an overall training difficulty of moderate level (Benikos et al, 2013 ) and is therefore an important improvement for previous training paradigms (Peckham & Johnson, 2018 ).…”

“…None of the previous studies investigating an alcohol-related GNG training paradigm (Di Lemma & Field, 2017 ; Houben et al, 2011 , 2012 ; Kilwein et al, 2018 ) have systematically investigated the performance in withholding motor responses as outcome of interest. Even though Strickland et al ( 2019 ) found an improved withholding performance after a 14-session training in individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder, they did not compare the withholding performance to their control groups (see also Jones et al, 2020 ). Only in smokers, Adams et al ( 2017 ) investigated GNG performance, but found no effect.…”