Background: Attentional biases and deficits play a central role in the development and maintenance
of alcohol dependence, but the underlying attentional processes accounting for these deficits have been
very little explored. Importantly, the differential alterations across the 3 attentional networks (alerting,
orienting, and executive control) remain unclear in this pathology.
Methods: Thirty recently detoxified alcohol-dependent individuals and 30 paired controls completed
the Attention Network Test, which allow exploring the attentional alterations specifically related
to the 3 attentional networks.
Results: Alcohol-dependent individuals presented globally delayed reaction times compared to controls.
More centrally, they showed a differential deficit across attention networks, with a preserved performance
for alerting and orienting networks but impaired executive control (p < 0.001). This deficit
was not related to psychopathological comorbidities but was positively correlated with the duration of
alcohol-dependence habits, the number of previous detoxification treatments and the mean alcohol
consumption before detoxification.
Conclusions: These results suggest that attentional alterations in alcohol dependence are centrally
due to a specific alteration of executive control. Intervention programs focusing on executive components
of attention should be promoted, and these results support the frontal lobe hypothesis