Previous studies have shown that reactivity to alcohol use may play a role in both heavy episodic drinking (HED) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) risk. A new study examined whether alcoholic beverage preferences affect event-related potential (ERP) indices of cue reactivity to different types of alcohol images among heavy episodic drinkers. Participants were HED students (N = 16) ages 21-35 and were recruited form TX State. Students with a history of past-year regular drinking and at least one past-month HED episode were included. Participants completed questionnaires and provided their demographics, drinking history including HED and beverage preferences. They also completed quantity-frequency index (QFI), measuring the ounces of absolute ethanol consumed per day over the past 6 months. Participants attended trials, which consisted of a fixation (400 ms) followed by an alcohol or control image (1,500 ms or until the response) and feedback. There were four blocks of 240 trials, each block was broken into two runs consisting of 90 unique preferred alcohol images designated as Go stimuli and 30 unique control images as No-Go stimuli. Participants were seated in front of a monitor in a soundproof, radiofrequency-shielded chamber. Before each block, they were informed of target (Go) stimuli and instructed to press a specific key on a computer keyboard as quickly as possible when a target appeared. EEG data was sampled and ERPs, including N2 and P3 amplitudes, were recorded for the trials. The authors used t-tests to compare demographic and drinking variables as well as separate repeated-measures analysis of variance (RM-ANOVA) with trial type, condition and image type to analyze behavioral and ERP data. Results showed no sex differences for age, age at first drink, total QFI or days since last drink. For preferred beverages the majority of men chose beer, while the majority of women chose wine. Furthermore, larger N2 amplitudes for preferred alcohol versus control images (p = .032) were observed, but amplitudes for non-preferred alcohol did not differ from those for control images (p = .111). In addition, amplitudes for preferred alcohol were enhanced versus non-preferred alcohol images (p = .004). P3 amplitudes and latencies were not sensitive to preferences, but latencies were delayed and amplitudes for No-Go trials were larger than those for Go trials (p = .001).
Take away: In this study, N2 cue reactivity was observed for preferred alcohol images in comparison to control and non-preferred alcohol images, indicating increased attention capture among HED college students.