Effects of acute ethyl alcohol consumption on a psychophysical measure of lateral inhibition in human vision.

Authors

Kevin D Johnston
Brian Timney

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1-2008

Journal

Vision research

Volume

48

Issue

14

First Page

1539

Last Page

1544

URL with Digital Object Identifier

10.1016/j.visres.2008.04.010

Abstract

Acute consumption of ethyl alcohol affects a variety of visual functions. However, there have been few systematic attempts to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying these effects. Here, we employed the Westheimer paradigm to investigate the hypothesis that alcohol reduces lateral inhibition within human "perceptive fields", the psychophysical analogue of physiological receptive fields. Westheimer functions obtained under alcohol and no-alcohol conditions at photopic, mesopic, and scotopic levels of adaptation showed changes consistent with an alcohol-induced decrease in lateral inhibition. We conclude that this decrease in lateral inhibition may be responsible for some of the changes in visual perception that result from alcohol consumption.

Notes

Version of record available as:

Khan, S., & Timney B. (2007) Alcohol does not affect dark adaptation or luminance increment thresholds. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 68, 493-502. DOI: 10.15288/jsad.2007.68.493

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