Is a popular painkiller hampering our ability to notice errors?

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/uot-iap040816.php

Public Release: 8-Apr-2016
Is a popular painkiller hampering our ability to notice errors?
University of Toronto

It's been known for more than a century that acetaminophen is an effective painkiller, but according to a new U of T study it could also be impeding error-detection in the brain.

The research, authored by a team including postdoctoral fellow Dan Randles and researchers from the University of British Columbia, is the first neurological study to look at how acetaminophen could be inhibiting the brain response associated with making errors.

"Past research tells us physical pain and social rejection share a neural process that we experience as distress, and both have been traced to same part of the brain," says Randles.

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"It looks like acetaminophen makes it harder to recognize an error, which may have implications for cognitive control in daily life," says Randles.

Cognitive control is an important neurological function because people are constantly doing cognitive tasks that flow automatically like reading, walking or talking. These tasks require very little cognitive control because they are well mapped out neurological processes, notes Randles.

"Sometimes you need to interrupt your normal processes or they'll lead to a mistake, like when you're talking to a friend while crossing the street, you should still be ready to react to an erratic driver," explains Randles.

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The study was double blind, so neither the researcher running the study nor the participant knew whether they had been given a placebo or acetaminophen.

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"An obvious question is if people aren't detecting these errors, are they also making errors more often when taking acetaminophen?

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