A Simple Auditory Oddball Task in Young Adult Males at High Risk for Alcoholism

Abstract

The reduction in the amplitude of the auditory P300 in young adult males at high risk for alcoholism has not been as consistently replicated as has been the reduction in the visual P300 amplitude in the same group. The easier nature of the auditory task was thought to be responsible for the inconsistency. We examined the auditory P300 amplitude in a group that has not yet been studied, young adult sons of alcoholics (mean age = 24.9 years, n = 48), and compared them with age and sex-matched controls (mean age = 27.8 years, n = 23). We found the auditory P300 amplitude to be reduced in the high-risk group and this reduction to be the greatest over the posterior centroparietal and occipital areas when individual leads were examined. We further analyzed the data using current source density, a mathematical transformation that circumvents some of the errors inherent in measuring scalp-evoked potentials, and found reduced current source density in the high-risk group in the posterior central and parietal areas. Thus, we found that a simple auditory oddball task was effective in eliciting P300 differences in groups at high and low risk for alcoholism. The clinical significance of the P300 is discussed, as well as the relevance of task difficulty in eliciting auditory P300 differences in young males at high risk for alcoholism.

Effects of Memantine on Event-Related Potential, Oscillations, and Complexity in Individuals With and Without Family Histories of Alcoholism

“…Our fi ndings during placebo were inconsistent with prior reports (Ramachandran et al, 1996;Suresh et al, 2003). The current study used a heterogeneous sample (both male and female) compared with prior studies, where males (Ramachandran et al, 1996) and females (Suresh et al, 2003) were examined separately. The lack of family history effect may be attributed to the modest sample size.…”

“…A genderspecifi c defi cit in P300 amplitude was noted in both male (Hada et al, 2000) and female (Suresh et al, 2003) alcoholics. P300 amplitude defi cits were reported in both female (Hill and Steinhauer, 1993) and male offspring of alcoholics (Ramachandran et al, 1996). Another EEG analysis ap-proach used in alcoholism research involves time-frequency (TF) decompositions of ERP.…”

Delta and theta oscillations as risk markers in adolescent offspring of alcoholics

“…The P300 amplitude decrements do not recover with abstinence (Porjesz and Begleiter, 1985), and therefore suggesting that reduced P300 amplitude antecedes the development of alcoholism. The P300 amplitude reduction has been replicated under different experimental conditions, with and without alcohol administration, in both older and younger subjects at risk, in male and female offspring and in subjects of different ethnicities (Begleiter et al, 1987;Benegal et al, 1995;Berman et al, 1993;Cohen et al, 1997;Ehlers et al, 2003;Ehlers et al, 2001;Hill and Steinhauer, 1993;Kamarajan et al, 2005b;O′Connor et al, 1986;O′Connor et al, 1987;Porjesz and Begleiter, 1990;Ramachandran et al, 1996;Ratsma et al, 2001;Rodriguez Holguin et al, 1999;Steinhauer and Hill, 1993;Van der Stelt et al, 1998). The lowered P300 amplitude observed in clinical sample of alcoholics has also been established in community samples .…”

Auditory P3a deficits in male subjects at high risk for alcoholism

“…Recent reports have found that when both go and no-go are used to elicit the P3 component, reduced amplitude for both alcoholics and HR individuals were obtained (Cohen et al 1997a(Cohen et al , 1997b. In keeping with various neurophysiological accounts of the P3 ERP component (Desmedt 1980;Lutzenberger et al 1978), low P3 voltage may be an index of CNS disinhibition Cohen et al 1997aCohen et al , 1997bBegleiter 1996, 1998;Ramachandran et al 1996). Several investigators have proposed that the P3 component of the ERP is largely caused by a widely distributed inhibitory event which operates under various processing functions (Halgren et al 1986;Rockstroh et al 1992;Smith et al 1990;Woodward et al 1991).…”