Summary: New research finds that binge drinking is linked to broader neural dysfunction than previously understood. People who binge drink show unusually high activation in visual brain areas involved in recognizing body parts, and they require greater neural effort to imagine and feel others’ pain, indicating reduced or more effortful empathy.
Source: University of Sussex
People who engage in binge drinking display more extensive brain differences than earlier studies suggested, according to new research from the University of Sussex.
The study found that, when asked to imagine another person in pain, those who binge drink needed to recruit more brain resources and took longer to provide empathy-related responses than non-binge drinkers.
Published in the October 2020 issue of NeuroImage: Clinical, the paper titled “Differential brain responses for perception of pain during empathic response in binge drinkers compared to non-binge drinkers” examined brain activity in 71 young adult social drinkers from the UK and France. Participants completed a pain perception task inside fMRI scanners; roughly half were classified as binge drinkers and half were not. All participants were sober during scanning.
During the experiment, participants viewed images showing a limb being injured and were asked to imagine either that the body part belonged to themselves or to another person, then rate how much pain was depicted.
When adopting the perspective of another person in pain, binge drinkers responded more slowly than non-binge drinkers. Functional scans showed that binge drinkers’ brains exhibited greater activity—indicating they had to work harder—to estimate how much pain another person would experience.
The research also identified unexpectedly widespread differences in neural activation. A visual processing region associated with recognizing body parts—the Fusiform Body Area—showed elevated activation in binge drinkers when they viewed the painful images. This heightened response was not observed in non-binge drinkers viewing the same stimuli.
When participants were instructed to imagine the injured limb as their own, binge drinkers’ pain ratings were similar to those of non-binge drinkers, suggesting the main differences emerged when taking another person’s perspective rather than when imagining personal pain.
Professor Theodora Duka, School of Psychology at the University of Sussex, commented:
“I have studied the effects of excessive alcohol consumption for many years and documented widespread links between binge drinking and difficulties in self-control and attention. In this study, we wanted to know whether binge drinkers show altered empathy and distinct brain responses when imagining another person in pain. Our findings suggest empathy-related processing is affected: a brain area involved in identifying body parts, the Fusiform Body Area, showed hyperactivity in binge drinkers during empathic situations.”
Dr Charlotte Rae, also from the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex, added:
“Our results were surprising. Binge drinkers appear to need greater neural effort to experience empathy for another person’s pain. They show higher brain activation to accomplish the same empathic judgment as non-binge drinkers. In everyday terms, this could mean that people who binge drink find it harder to perceive others’ suffering quickly or automatically. While binge drinkers are not necessarily less capable of empathy overall, they seem to require additional neural resources to reach the same empathic outcome, and when cognitive resources are limited they may fail to engage empathic responses.”
Binge drinking is defined in this study as consuming more than 60 g of pure alcohol—approximately three quarters of a bottle of wine or about 2½ pints of lager—on at least one occasion in the past 30 days. Around 30% of adults aged 15 and older who drink alcohol in the UK and France meet this criterion.
About this psychology research article
Source:
University of Sussex
Contacts:
Anna Ford – University of Sussex
Image Source:
The image is credited to Dr Charlotte Rae.
Original Research: Closed access
“Differential brain responses for perception of pain during empathic response in binge drinkers compared to non-binge drinkers” by Charlotte Rae et al., NeuroImage: Clinical.
Abstract
Differential brain responses for perception of pain during empathic response in binge drinkers compared to non-binge drinkers
Binge drinking is associated with impaired cognitive control and emotional regulation. Reduced empathy—difficulty understanding and responding to others’ feelings—has been implicated in Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD). This study compared empathic processing and related neural responses in young social drinkers who do and do not engage in binge drinking, and examined whether patterns were consistent across participants from the UK and France. Alcohol use history and impulsivity were assessed in seventy-one participants (37 UK, of whom 19 were binge drinkers; 34 France, of whom 17 were binge drinkers), followed by functional neuroimaging. While in the scanner, participants viewed images depicting bodily pain versus no pain and adopted either a self-perspective (the pain recipient) or an other-perspective (observer). Activation in anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC) and insula differentiated pain from no-pain conditions. Compared with non-binge drinkers, binge drinkers showed stronger activation in a cluster spanning the fusiform gyrus and inferior temporal gyrus that includes the Fusiform Body Area. Behaviorally, binge drinkers took longer to respond to pain images, especially when adopting a self-perspective. Analyses linking brain activation changes to behavioral responses suggested that non-binge drinkers engage brain regions supporting self–other distinction during empathic processing, whereas binge drinkers do not show the same pattern. These findings indicate that binge drinking is associated with altered empathy-related behavior and neural responses, consistent with the role of empathy in the development and maintenance of problematic alcohol use.