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Acetaminophen attenuates error evaluation in cortex.

Daniel Randles1, Julia W Y Kam2, Steven J Heine3

  • 1Department of Psychology, The University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, dan.randles@utoronto.ca.

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
|February 20, 2016
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Acetaminophen blunts emotional responses by inhibiting evaluative processing, specifically affecting the error-related positivity (Pe) brainwave. This finding suggests acetaminophen

Keywords:
ERNPeacetaminophenerror

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Psychopharmacology

Background:

  • Acetaminophen is known to affect emotional processing.
  • Studies suggest it reduces reactivity to various negative and positive stimuli.
  • A hypothesis proposes acetaminophen causes a general blunting of evaluative processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To test if acetaminophen blunts evaluative processing.
  • To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying acetaminophen's affective effects using event-related potentials (ERPs).

Main Methods:

  • A double-blind, placebo-controlled study with 62 participants.
  • Participants received either acetaminophen or a placebo.
  • The Go/NoGo task was used to elicit errors, and ERPs (ERN and Pe) were measured.

Main Results:

  • Acetaminophen significantly inhibited the error-related positivity (Pe) brainwave.
  • The error-related negativity (ERN) was not affected by acetaminophen.
  • Individual differences in Pe magnitude correlated with omission errors, mediating acetaminophen's effect on error rates.

Conclusions:

  • Acetaminophen's affective blunting effect is characterized by the inhibition of evaluative processing.
  • The error-related positivity (Pe) is more closely linked to conscious error awareness than the error-related negativity (ERN).