Contents and Time-Course of Falsified Alprazolam Detections in New South Wales, Australia.

Introduction: Falsified alprazolam tablets (sometimes called 'counterfeit alprazolam') typically do not contain alprazolam and instead contain novel benzodiazepines or other drugs. We describe temporal changes in the number and contents of falsified alprazolam tablets in New South Wales, Australia.

Methods: We searched a database of analysed police seizures between January 2012 and March 2024 for falsified alprazolam (tablet presenting as Kalma, Mylan, Xanax, Sandoz or Alprax brands, but not containing alprazolam and/or contained other drugs).

Trends in novel opioid use and detections in exposures and police drug seizures in New South Wales.

Introduction: Novel opioids, including non-medical and non-opium-based opioids such as fentanyl analogues and nitazenes, pose a significant risk of harm due to their high potency. There is little published data on novel opioid detections and harms in Australia, yet they are implicated in multiple deaths. This study describes the detections and harms of novel opioids in New South Wales.

Improving access to public physical activity events for disadvantaged communities in Australia.

Background: Physical activity has numerous health benefits, but participation is lower in disadvantaged communities. 'parkrun' overcomes one of the main barriers for disadvantaged communities, the cost of activities, by providing a free, regular community-based physical activity event for walkers, runners and volunteers. This study assesses equity of access (in terms of distance to the nearest parkrun) stratified by socioeconomic deprivation, and identifies the optimal location for 100 new events to increase equity of access.

Can Inhibitory Training Produce Reductions in Drinking? Evaluating the Influence of the Control Condition.

Objective: Training in an inhibitory control task has produced reductions in alcohol use among heavy drinkers. However, the longevity of effects remains unknown, and much research has used suboptimal control conditions. Here, we assess the effectiveness of "Beer-NoGo" inhibitory training to reduce consumption up to 4 weeks after training compared with a "Beer-Go" control task, an online version of the Brief Alcohol Intervention (BAI), and an Oddball control condition.

Verbal Learning and Memory in Cannabis and Alcohol Users: An Event-Related Potential Investigation.

Long-term heavy use of cannabis and alcohol are known to be associated with memory impairments. In this study, we used event-related potentials to examine verbal learning and memory processing in a commonly used behavioral task. We conducted two studies: first, a small pilot study of adolescent males, comprising 13 Drug-Naive Controls (DNC), 12 heavy drinkers (HD) and 8 cannabis users (CU).

Current forms of inhibitory training produce no greater reduction in drinking than simple assessment: A preliminary study.

Background: Disinhibition is apparent in users of many substances, including heavy drinkers. Previous research has shown that brief training to improve inhibitory control is associated with reduced alcohol consumption. We investigated whether a new form of inhibitory training would produce greater reductions, relative to a carefully designed control condition and a proven method of reducing consumption, the Brief Alcohol Intervention (BAI).

Error detection and behavioural inhibition in young heavy drinkers.

Background: Increases in inhibitory errors in heavy drinkers are established; less well-studied is whether heavy drinkers are aware of these errors in performance. Reductions in error detection and awareness limit the possibility for remedial action to be taken, and have implications for substance abusers seeking to control use: failure to monitor and/or adjust ongoing behaviour may be linked to using more or more often than intended, and failing to adjust behaviour after a slip. Here we report the first study of both inhibitory control and error awareness in young heavy drinkers, using behavioural and psychophysiological measures.

Feedforward consequences of isometric contractions: effort and ventilation.

The onset of voluntary muscle contractions causes rapid increases in ventilation and is accompanied by a sensation of effort. Both the ventilatory response and perception of effort are proportional to contraction intensity, but these behaviors have been generalized from contractions of a single muscle group. Our aim was to determine how these relationships are affected by simultaneous contractions of multiple muscle groups.

Sex differences in the relationship between heavy alcohol use, inhibition and performance monitoring: Disconnect between behavioural and brain functional measures.

Previous research has reported mixed evidence of sex differences in the relationship between heavy alcohol use and deficits in behavioural control. Here, we examine sex differences in behavioural and event-related potential (ERP) markers of deficient inhibition. Participants were 71 young adults aged 18-21, who either drank heavily regularly (i.

Female but not male young heavy drinkers display altered performance monitoring.

Difficulties in monitoring ongoing behaviour may be linked to real-life problematic drinking behaviours. Prior research suggests female heavy drinkers in particular display greater cognitive control deficits. Here, we examine trial-to-trial behavioural adaptations in a conflict monitoring task, relative to drinking behaviour and sex.

Deficits in behavioural inhibition in substance abuse and addiction: a meta-analysis.

Aims: Deficits in behavioural inhibitory control are attracting increasing attention as a factor behind the development and maintenance of substance dependence. However, evidence for such a deficit is varied in the literature. Here, we synthesised published results to determine whether inhibitory ability is reliably impaired in substance users compared to controls.

Evidence of deficits in behavioural inhibition and performance monitoring in young female heavy drinkers.

Background: New models of the development and maintenance of substance abuse give increasing importance to the role of deficits in inhibitory function. Much of the evidence to support this claim comes from male participants, despite some researchers showing greater disinhibition in females. Clearly, more research on female heavy drinkers is warranted.

CNV resolution does not cause NoGo anteriorisation of the P3: a failure to replicate Simson et al.

For 35 years, some researchers have argued that CNV resolution may affect or even produce the increased P3 for NoGo compared to Go trials, and thus that no 'inhibitory' NoGo P3 exists. This is based on the work of Simson et al. (1977b), the scalp topography of potentials in auditory and visual Go/NoGo tasks.

The effects of inhibitory control training on alcohol consumption, implicit alcohol-related cognitions and brain electrical activity.

This study aimed to replicate findings that alcohol consumption and positive implicit beer-related cognitions can be reduced using inhibitory control (IC) training, with the addition of an active training control. Frontal EEG asymmetry, an objective psychophysiological index of approach motivation, was used as a dependent measure to examine training outcomes. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two IC training conditions (Beer NoGo or Beer Go) or a Brief Alcohol Intervention (BAI) (i.

Parafac and go/no-go: disentangling CNV return from the P3 complex by trilinear component analysis.

It has been proposed that the fronto-central difference between go-P3 and no-go P3 is due to motor-related negativity overlapping P3 in the go case and positive relaxation of such negativity overlapping P3 in the no-go case, and that this motor-related activation may be identified by its having the same topography as the preceding CNV. Testing these suggestions meets with the problem of how to validly distinguish between P3 and the assumed overlapping continuing or downsweeping CNV. Distinguishing between overlapping components is a major reason why principal component analysis (PCA) has been applied, but the major criterion of conventional rotations (Varimax and Promax) is avoiding overlap.

Motor and non-motor inhibition in the Go/NoGo task: an ERP and fMRI study.

The contribution of movement-related activity to Go/NoGo ERP differences has been debated for 25 years. In this study, we examined ERP and fMRI measures of activity in twenty adults performing non-motor (count) and motor (right-handed button press) trials of the Go/NoGo task. Task performance was highly accurate and similar in the ERP and fMRI environments.

To go or not to go, that is the question: do the N2 and P3 reflect stimulus- or response-related conflict?

Several studies have linked increases in the N2 and P3 components to response conflict, evoked when multiple incompatible responses are simultaneously activated. However, these studies confound a change of response with a change of stimulus identity, and often a change in stimulus probability also. In two experiments, additional trial types were presented, which signified a change of stimulus, but still demanded the expected response.

On the use of event-related potentials to auditory stimuli in the Go/NoGo task.

The N2 and P3 components of the event-related potential (ERP) are putative markers of inhibition in the Go/NoGo task. If this is the case, they should be unaffected by stimulus presentation modality. Theoretical researchers have suggested that the effect is smaller or absent with auditory stimuli, while others have shown that the effect depends on the perceptual similarity of the stimuli.

Conflict and inhibition in the cued-Go/NoGo task.

Objective: Current debate centres on the inhibitory and conflict interpretations of the N2 and P3 components of the event-related potential (ERP). We examined behavioural responses and ERPs in a cued-Go/NoGo task.

Methods: Participants were required to inhibit a planned response (NoGo target after Go cue), change a planned response to a different one (Invalid cueing), and activate an unexpected response (Go target after NoGo cue).

Sequence effects support the conflict theory of N2 and P3 in the Go/NoGo task.

In two-choice tasks the preceding sequence of stimuli robustly influences both the P3 ERP component and reaction time (RT) to the current stimulus. We examined sequence effects in both two-choice and Go/NoGo tasks to distinguish between inhibition and conflict accounts of the N2 and P3 components. RT results suggested similar subjective expectancies were generated in the Go/NoGo and two-choice task.

Brain dynamics in the auditory oddball task as a function of stimulus intensity and task requirements.

We examined relationships between the phase of narrow-band electroencephalographic (EEG) activity at stimulus onset and the resultant event-related potentials (ERPs) in an auditory oddball task, varying both stimulus intensity and active vs. passive task requirements between groups. We used a novel conceptualisation of orthogonal phase effects (cortical negativity vs.

The combined effect of muscle contraction history and motor commands on human position sense.

Along with afferent information, centrally generated motor command signals may play a role in joint position sense. Isometric muscle contractions can produce a perception of joint displacement in the same direction as the joint would move if unrestrained. Contradictory findings of perceived joint displacement in the opposite direction have been reported.

Anticipatory reconfiguration elicited by fully and partially informative cues that validly predict a switch in task.

Task-switching studies show no behavioral benefit of partially informative cues. However, ERP evidence of an early cue-locked positivity elicited by both fully and partially informative cues suggests that both cues trigger an anticipatory component of task set reconfiguration (Nicholson, Karayanidis, Davies, & Michie, 2006). We examined this apparent discrepancy using a cued-trials task-switching paradigm with three tasks.

Perception of movement extent depends on the extent of previous movements.

We report an aftereffect in perception of the extent (or degree or range) of joint movement, showing for the first time that a prolonged exposure to a passive back-and-forth movement of a certain extent results in a change in judgment of the extent of a subsequently presented movement. The adapting stimulus, movement about the wrist, had an extent of either 30 degrees or 75 degrees , while the test stimulus was a 50 degrees movement. Following a 4-min adaptation period, the estimated magnitudes of the test stimuli were 61 degrees and 36 degrees in the 30 degrees and 75 degrees condition, respectively (t test(6) = 9.