The common pain medication acetaminophen may hinder the brain's error detecting abilities, according to a new study published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience and covered by Health Newsline.
For the study, researchers separated 62 participants into two groups, administering one group a placebo and the other acetaminophen. Study participants were then asked to complete a target-detection task that required the subjects to hit a 'go' button every time the letter 'F' appeared on the screen and to refrain from hitting the button if an 'E' materialized on the screen.
Researchers used an electroencephalogram to measure electrical activity in the brain of the participants. Those who were given acetaminophen exhibited a reduction in a specific area of brain activity associated with the capacity to recognize errors.
Daniel Randles, PhD, the study's lead researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has previously found that acetaminophen can cause people to be less reactive to precarious situations. For this study, he wanted to more closely monitor the drug's effects on the brain.
"While there's been recent behavioral research on the effects of acetaminophen, we wanted to have a sense of what's happening neurologically," said Dr. Randles in Health Newsline. "It looks like acetaminophen makes it harder to recognize an error, which may have implications for cognitive control in daily life."
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