Abstract: Pre-attention is the mental process of determining whether or not to attend a stimulus before focusing on it. It is very important for human being to adapt to the environment full of changes. Recently, researchers have examined the effect of alcohol on pre-attention through MMN studies. These results show that: a. The amplitude of MMN decreases significantly and its peak latency delays significantly after drinking a dose more than 0.3g/kg alcohol; b. As to the condition of chronic drinking (eg. chronic alcoholism), the amplitude of MMN decreases and its peak latency delays. However, MMN recovers gradually after absent from alcohol; c. MMN of children from alcoholism families shows no difference from children from normal families. These results indicate that acute and chronic alcohol drinking impair pre-attentive processing. However, there is hardly any evidence showing that it will impair pre-attentive processing of the next generation.

Key words: alcohol, pre-attention, MMN