The involuntary nature of binge drinking: goal directedness and awareness of intention

Abstract

Binge drinking represents a public health issue and is a known risk factor in the development of alcohol use disorders. Previous studies have shown behavioural as well as neuroanatomical alterations associated with binge drinking. Here, we address the question of the automaticity or involuntary nature of the behaviour by assessing goal‐directed behaviour and intentionality. In this study, we used a computational two‐step task, designed to discern between model‐based/goal‐directed and model‐free/habitual behaviours, and the classic Libet clock task, to study intention awareness, in a sample of 31 severe binge drinkers (BD) and 35 matched healthy volunteers. We observed that BD had impaired goal‐directed behaviour in the two‐step task compared with healthy volunteers. In the Libet clock task, BD showed delayed intention awareness. Further, we demonstrated that alcohol use severity, as reflected by the alcohol use disorders identification test, correlated with decreased conscious awareness of volitional intention in BD, although it was unrelated to performance on the two‐step task. However, the time elapsed since the last drinking binge influenced the model‐free scores, with BD showing less habitual behaviour after longer abstinence. Our findings suggest that the implementation of goal‐directed strategies and the awareness of volitional intention are affected in current heavy alcohol users. However, the modulation of these impairments by alcohol use severity and abstinence suggests a state effect of alcohol use in these measures and that top‐down volitional control might be ameliorated with alcohol use cessation.

Instrumental and Pavlovian Mechanisms in Alcohol Use Disorder

“…Greater alcohol consumption and having had binge drinking episodes were not found to be associated with model-free/model-based control in 18-yearolds [31], dovetailing with preclinical results showing that adolescent rats did not express alcohol-related habits [70]. However, severe binge drinkers, who had had at least one binging episode per week for the previous 6 months, have been reported to display reduced model-based control compared with healthy controls [80]. Two large online studies have explored the association between problematic alcohol use, assessed with the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT [81,82]), and model-based/model-free behavior.…”

Reduced model-based decision-making in gambling disorder

“…While individuals with alcohol use disorder sometimes showed impaired MB after negative outcome (e.g., a non-rewarded trial) 35 , other studies find no difference in expression of MB choice between alcoholic and non-alcoholic participants 18,33,36 . Whereas binge drinkers had impaired goal-directed behavior in a computational two-step sequential decision-making task 37 , no association of goal-directed or habitual control and alcohol intake was found in young social drinkers 38 , neither between children of alcoholic father compared to their controls 39 . However, impaired MB was found in methamphetamine-dependent subjects 33 .…”

Habitual Routines and Automatic Tendencies Differential Roles in Alcohol Misuse Among Undergraduates

“…Consistently, the habit sensitization theories (Everitt and Robbins, 2016 ; Robbins, 2019 ) postulates that addictions are highly dependent on contextual cues and are triggered almost unconsciously, representing two key characteristics of automatic behavior. In addition, a strong reliance on contextual cues has been reported in alcohol use disorder by empirical paradigms, such as the Markov Two-Step Task or the Pavlovian to Instrumental Transfer Task (Sebold et al, 2014 , 2017 ; Doñamayor et al, 2018 ).…”