Moderate alcohol consumption in humans impairs feature binding in visual perception but not across perception and action

Abstract

Animal studies suggest a relationship between activation of the cholinergic system and neural synchronization, which again has been suggested to mediate feature binding. We investigated whether suppressing cholinergic activity through moderate alcohol consumption in healthy humans affects behavioral measures of feature binding in visual perception and across perception and action. Indeed, evidence of the binding of shape and color, and of shape and location, of visual objects disappeared after alcohol consumption, whereas bindings between object features and the manual response were unaffected.