Biomedical subjects

P R Finn

Publications and source records attributed to P R Finn.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

P300, disinhibited personality, and early-onset alcohol problems.

BACKGROUND: Recent research suggests that a reduced P300 amplitude of the event-related potential is associated with a vulnerability to alcoholism. This study tested the hypothesis that reductions in the P300 amplitude would be associated with specific dimensions of disinhibited personality (social deviance proneness and impulsivity) and that these personality traits would mediate the association between P300 and alcohol problems in a young adult sample that varied widely in disinhibitory traits. METHODS: Alcohol problems, personality (impulsivity, social deviance, harm avoidance, and excitement seeking), and event-related potentials were measured in a sample of 190 subjects (87 men, 103 women) with a mean age of 20.7 +/- 1.9 years. RESULTS: Social deviance, impulsivity, and alcohol problems were associated with reductions in the P300, but only in male subjects. A structural model suggested that social deviance, impulsivity, and alcohol problems were all strongly related to P300 amplitude at Fz. Further analyses indicated that for male subjects, social deviance mediated the association between P300 at Fz and alcohol problems as well as the association between impulsivity and alcohol problems. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that reduced P300s are strongly associated with a general tendency toward antisocial, defiant, and impulsive traits, which might, in turn, increase the risk for alcohol abuse. The lack of an association between reduced P300s and personality or alcohol problems in women was unexpected and deserves further study.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Evaluation of behavioral disinhibition in P/NP and HAD1/LAD1 rats.

1. Two lines of rats specifically bred for alcohol preference were exposed to two different behavioral tasks that required behavioral inhibition to successfully solve. 2. Learning and performance of a step-down passive avoidance task and a differential reinforcement of low-rate responding task were studied in P/NP and HAD1/LAD1 rats. 3. While the P rats had difficulty in learning both tasks, HAD1, LAD1 and NP rats performed at control levels. 4. These data suggest that P rats, but not HAD1 rats, may have problems learning tasks that require inhibition of ongoing or previously learned behaviors.

Animals↗

PubMed2000

The effects of familial risk, personality, and expectancies on alcohol use and abuse.

This study tested a structural model of the association between familial risk, personality risk, alcohol expectancies, and alcohol abuse in a sample of 224 young adult offspring of alcoholics and 209 offspring of nonalcoholics. The results provided support for 2 personality-risk pathways, a social deviance proneness and an excitement/pleasure seeking path, that accounted for a significant portion of the association between a familial alcoholism and alcohol abuse. The path from familial alcoholism to social deviance proneness lead directly to alcohol problems. The path from familial alcoholism to excitement/pleasure seeking was associated with increased drinking, which, in turn, was associated with alcohol problems. Positive alcohol expectancies accounted for part of the association between excitement seeking and alcohol use. The results suggest 2 different biopsychosocial mechanisms that elevate risk for abuse in the offspring of alcoholics.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Frontal EEG response to threat, aggressive traits and a family history of alcoholism: a preliminary study.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated the association between frontal EEG response to threat, a family history of alcoholism (positive history = FHP, negative = FHN), aggressive - antisocial traits and negative affect. METHOD: EEG in 17 FHP men and 17 FHN men was recorded while resting and while awaiting an electric shock. RESULTS: Compared with FHNs, FHPs showed significantly greater threat-induced decreases in frontal alpha, but no change in frontal beta power. FHNs had significant threat-induced increases in frontal beta power. A measure of aggressive traits, the Buss-Durkee Hostility Assault scale, was also significantly associated with greater threat-induced decreases in frontal alpha power and low reactivity to threat on frontal beta power. CONCLUSIONS: The data suggest that familial risk for alcoholism and aggressive traits may be associated with a paradoxical pattern of both increased reactivity (more alpha suppression) and decreased reactivity (no increase in beta power) to threat in frontal cortical regions. However, these results are preliminary and tentative due to limitations arising from the small sample size and the exploratory nature of this study.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

The influence of traits of disinhibition on the association between alcohol use and risky sexual behavior.

BACKGROUND: Past research has demonstrated a link between alcohol use and risky sexual behavior; the processes that may underlie this association remain largely unexplored, however. Recent studies suggest that personality traits such as excitement seeking, impulsivity, and social deviance proneness may play an important role in both behaviors. METHODS: A structural model of the association between disinhibited personality traits, alcohol use, and risky sexual behavior (sex with strangers/one-night stands) was tested. We recruited a sample of 410 college students that reported a wide range of scores on self-reported measures of disinhibition. We hypothesized that disinhibited personality characteristics would be primarily responsible for the association between risky sexual behavior and alcohol problems. A third-variable model was proposed to demonstrate this association. RESULTS: The results suggested that the relationship between alcohol use and risky sexual behavior is best explained by their common association with excitement seeking. There was a significant correlation between alcohol use and risky sexual behavior when considered alone. However, when controlling for the effects of personality, the correlation was nonsignificant. In a final model, both excitement seeking and social deviance proneness were found to be significantly associated with alcohol use, and excitement seeking was significantly related to risky sexual behavior. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest the relationship between alcohol use and risky sexual behavior is best characterized by a common association with excitement seeking.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

Decision-making biases, antisocial personality, and early-onset alcoholism.

BACKGROUND: Disinhibited, antisocial traits increase the risk for early-onset alcoholism. Research also suggests that decision biases which favor immediate large rewards regardless of long-term consequences may be important mechanisms associated with the biological substrates of antisocial traits. This study tested the hypothesis that early-onset alcoholism with antisocial personality (ASP) would be associated with favoring immediate larger rewards despite their being associated with long-term losses. METHODS: Twenty-seven early-onset alcoholics with and without a diagnosis of ASP, eight subjects with ASP but no alcohol dependence, and 32 controls were tested on a task that manipulated the magnitude of immediate rewards and the magnitude of long-term punishments. The sample was recruited from the community via advertisements. RESULTS: Compared with subjects without ASP, subjects with ASP favored larger immediate rewards despite long-term losses regardless of alcohol dependence; however, they learned to shift their decisions in a more advantageous direction over time. A disadvantageous decision bias also was associated with drinking greater quantities of alcohol and having a lower IQ. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that ASP in a young adult noninstitutionalized sample was associated with a pattern of disadvantageous decision making similar to that observed in patients with antisocial behavioral characteristics associated with lesions in the ventromedial frontal cortex. The data also suggest that this pattern of disadvantageous decision making is associated with consuming larger quantities of alcohol but not consuming alcohol more frequently.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

A characterization of approach and avoidance learning in high-alcohol-drinking (HAD) and low-alcohol-drinking (LAD) rats.

BACKGROUND: This study was undertaken as one of a series of experiments designed to examine basic behavioral characteristics present in rats bred specifically for alcohol preference. The basic premise for these experiments has been the idea that alcohol-preferring and -nonpreferring rats may differ in basic activation and inhibition control mechanisms that govern behavior and that different lines of alcohol-preferring rats may demonstrate differential deficits in behavioral activation and behavioral inhibition tendencies. In the present experiment, conditioned approach and avoidance behaviors were studied in alcohol-naïve high-alcohol-drinking (HAD), low-alcohol-drinking (LAD), and N/NIH rats to evaluate behavioral activation in this line of rats. METHODS: High alcohol drinking (HAD1), low alcohol drinking (LAD1), and N/Nih stock rats were trained to press a response bar during a tone signal to avoid a mild foot shock or receive a food reward. In addition, HAD2 and LAD2 rats, independently-bred replicate lines of the HAD1/LAD1 rats, were trained on the avoidance task. RESULTS: Although the HAD1 rats easily learned the appetitive version of the bar-pressing task, they did not learn the avoidance response. The LAD1 and N/Nih rats learned both the approach and the avoidance tasks normally. Similar to HAD1 rats, the HAD2 rats did not learn the avoidance response whereas LAD2 rats showed significant avoidance performance levels. CONCLUSIONS: The present data demonstrated that both HAD1 and HAD2 rats had a rather specific behavioral activation deficit: although they easily learned to press a bar to receive food reinforcement, they did not learn to press the bar to avoid a foot shock. We speculate that this failure to learn the avoidance response may be related to heightened anxiety in the HAD rats and that this excessive anxiety may lead to the development of high levels of alcohol consumption in these selectively bred rats.

Alcoholism↗

PubMed1999

Working memory, executive processes and the effects of alcohol on Go/No-Go learning: testing a model of behavioral regulation and impulsivity.

RATIONALE: Impulsivity is associated with increased risk for alcoholism. Alcohol also may increase impulsive behavior, although little is known about the processes underlying this effect. OBJECTIVES: This study tested a model proposing that the executive processes of working memory (WM) and conditional associative learning (CAL) modulate behavioral inhibition. Subjects had either a positive (FHP) or a negative (FHN) family history of alcoholism. Hypotheses were that alcohol would increase Go/No-Go impulsive responding but only in subjects with low working memory capacity (low-WM), low-CAL ability, or FHP for alcoholism. The model also predicted that WM and CAL modulate inhibitory responses to contingency reversal on a Go/No-Go task. METHODS: A Go/No-Go learning task with a midway contingency reversal was administered to 71 FHP and 78 FHN subjects when sober and after drinking one of two moderate doses of alcohol. WM (digits backward) and CAL (conditional spatial association task) were also assessed when sober. RESULTS: Alcohol resulted in more false alarms but only in low-WM subjects. Both WM and CAL modulated learning to inhibit behavior after contingency reversal, suggesting separate modulation mechanisms for WM and CAL. Subjects with low- capacity WM and subjects with low-capacity CAL ability had more difficulty learning response inhibition after contingency reversal. FHPs and FHNs did not differ in their response to alcohol. CONCLUSIONS: The results support our model of the modulatory role of WM and CAL in the ongoing regulation of behavioral inhibitory systems. The results also suggest that individuals with low capacity WM are more susceptible to alcohol's effect of increasing impulsive behavior, suggesting that alcohol reduces the capacity of working memory to modulate response inhibition.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

Reduced EEG alpha power in the male and female offspring of alcoholics.

Abnormalities in resting EEG may be associated with a predisposition to alcoholism. Research also suggests that high levels of negative affect are important mediators of the predisposition to alcoholism in the offspring of alcoholics. This study tested the hypothesis that the offspring of alcoholics show deficits in EEG alpha and excessive EEG beta activity, which, in turn, would be associated with high levels of negative affect. Participants were 37 men and 27 women with a positive family history of alcoholism and 37 men and 29 women with a negative family history of alcoholism. Personal and family history of psychopathology, psychological traits, and resting EEG were each assessed in separate testing sessions. Results indicated that subjects with a family history of alcoholism had reduced relative and absolute alpha power in occipital (O1, O2) and frontal (F3, F4, Fz) regions, and increased relative beta in both regions compared with subjects with a negative family history of alcoholism. EEG alpha and beta activity were not significantly correlated with trait anxiety, a diagnosis of depression, or antisocial traits. The results suggest that deficits in resting EEG alpha are associated with risk for alcoholism, although their etiological significance is unclear.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Effects of outcome expectancies and disinhibition on ad lib alcohol consumption.

OBJECTIVE: The present study was designed to demonstrate a causal role for alcohol expectancies in alcohol consumption by experimentally manipulating expectancies and measuring ad libitum consumption in the laboratory. A second goal was to determine whether effects of expectancy manipulation on alcohol consumption would differ as a function of disinhibition, a trait often associated with increased risk for alcohol-related problems. METHOD: Male nonproblem drinkers (N = 120) completed measures of preexisting expectancies, disinhibition and typical alcohol consumption; were given expectancies for the effects of alcohol on a novel task for which they were paid based on their performance; and participated in an ad lib drinking session. RESULTS: Subjects who were told that alcohol would impair task performance expected greater impairments in performance (p < .001) and consumed less alcohol (p < .05) than subjects told that alcohol had no effect on performance and those told that the effects of alcohol were unknown. Differences in alcohol consumption across groups were mediated by expected effects of alcohol on task performance. Subjects scoring higher in disinhibition expected more negative effects of alcohol in the impairment condition than in the other conditions, whereas subjects scoring lower in disinhibition did not expect differences in the effects of alcohol across the three conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Alcohol outcome expectancies were effectively manipulated and a causal effect of expectancy on alcohol consumption was demonstrated. This was the first demonstration of a causal effect of expectancy using a behavioral measure of alcohol consumption.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

A characterization of approach and avoidance learning in alcohol-preferring and alcohol-nonpreferring rats.

Although numerous biochemical and physiological differences have been shown to be correlated with alcohol preference, less is known about behavioral factors that may correlate with alcohol preference. Using a signaled barpressing task, alcohol-preferring (P; n = 18) and alcohol-nonpreferring (NP; n = 19) rats were compared for their ability to learn an appetitive and an aversive task. Results showed that P rats had difficulty learning the tasks in comparison with NP and nonselected, control rats when appetitive training was given first. However, if aversive training came first, the NP rats performed poorly in comparison with the P and nonselected rats. These results suggest that these lines of rats may differ in behavioral inhibition and sensitivity to conditioned fear. Furthermore, these behavioral differences may offer a richer analysis of the traits that were co-selected with the alcohol-seeking and alcohol-avoiding phenotypes.

Alcohol Drinking↗

PubMed1997

Heterogeneity in the families of sons of alcoholics: the impact of familial vulnerability type on offspring characteristics.

In 2 samples of sons of alcoholics (family history positive for alcoholism; FHP: N = 74 & N = 72), cluster analyses identified 3 subtypes of familial vulnerability: 1 with low levels of familial psychopathology (FHP-LP) and moderate levels of familial alcoholism; a 2nd with high levels of familial antisocial personality (FHP-ASP), violence, and alcoholism; and a 3rd with high levels of familial depression (FHP-DEP), mania, anxiety disorder, and alcoholism. Compared with family history negative (FHN) participants (N = 106), FHP offspring had higher levels of alcohol problems. FHP-ASP offspring had elevated levels of antisocial traits and negative affect. Compared with FHN participants, FHP-DEP offspring elevated levels of antisocial traits, hypomania, and experience seeking. FHP-LP offspring had moderate levels of antisocial traits.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

P300 from men with a family history of alcoholism under different incentive conditions.

OBJECTIVE: Males with a family history of alcoholism (Family History Positive [FHP]) have frequently been reported to show an attenuated amplitude of the P300 component of the EEG event-related potential (ERP). The purpose of the present study was to explore the influence of incentives on the amplitude of the P300 to Target stimuli in FHP and FHN (Family History Negative) men. METHOD: The ERPs of 20 FHP and 20 FHN men were recorded in a visual discrimination task under two conditions: a no incentive (Neutral) and a reward/loss of reward (Incentive) conditions. ERPs following Target, Non-Target and Novel stimuli were examined. RESULTS: The FHP subjects displayed the expected attenuation of P300 amplitude, regardless of the stimulus type (Target, Non-Target or Novel), compared to the FHN subjects. The FHN subjects showed the predicted effect of a significantly increased P300 amplitude following Target stimuli in the Incentive condition whereas the FHP subjects did not display significantly greater P300 amplitudes in response to the incentive. CONCLUSIONS: These results may reflect a deficit in the motivational-cognitive system of FHP subjects. Analyses suggest that changes in P300 amplitude in response to the incentive can be predicted by subjects' scores on self-report measures of sensation seeking and behavioral undercontrol. However, such measures could not explain subjects' absolute P300 amplitude to Target stimuli.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

Physiological responses in sons of alcoholics.

Researchers have differentiated sons of alcoholics (SOA's) from sons of nonalcoholics (non-SOA's) on various measures of physiological activity that appear to be related to the SOA's increased vulnerability to developing alcohol problems. This article summarizes major findings in the literature and discusses the implications of risk-related physiological characteristics for the future development of alcohol problems. SOA's tend to show signs of physiological activity associated with anxiety states, such as increased heart rate in response to stressful stimuli. Studies also demonstrate that SOA's differ greatly from non-SOA's in their response to alcohol. Drinking alcohol dramatically reduces SOAs' reactivity to both stressful and nonstressful stimuli. Additionally, SOA's appear to be less sensitive to alcohol's intoxicating and impairing effects. However, studies also suggest that some SOA's may experience more of alcohol's rewarding effects for a brief period after drinking. Increased stress-dampening and reduced responsiveness to alcohol's negative effects also appear to predict the development of future alcohol problems and may reflect important vulnerabilities in SOA's.

Alcoholism↗

PubMed1996

Ethanol-induced change in cardiac and endogenous opiate function and risk for alcoholism.

Susceptibility to alcoholism varies with age, gender, and familial background. Youthful nonalcoholic males with multigenerational family histories of male alcoholism seem at particular risk. Previous investigations suggest that such males are characterized by abnormal psychophysiological response, while sober and alcohol-intoxicated; additional recent studies indicate that the endogenous opiate systems are involved in mediating ethanol reinforcement and modulating intake. We first compared cardiac response to alcohol administration among young (mean = 22.8 years), nonalcoholic men and women with multigenerational, unigenerational, and negative family histories of alcohol dependence and abuse. Then, we compared the ethanol-induced cardiac response of the males in these three groups to that of currently alcohol-dependent older males and age-matched nonalcoholic male controls. Finally, we examined ethanol-induced change in plasma beta-endorphin and cortisol levels among a subset of the nonalcoholic males, divided into those with high and low levels of postethanol administration heart-rate increase. Nonalcoholic males with multigenerational family histories of male alcoholism were characterized by significantly higher [t(301) = 5.70, p < 0.0001, Cohen's d = 0.73] levels of ethanol-induced heart-rate increase than nonalcoholics from all other comparison groups. The magnitude of their increase matched that of current male alcohol-dependents. Nonalcoholic males with high levels of ethanol-induced heart-rate increase also produced significantly more plasma beta-endorphin after consuming alcohol. Peak production of beta-endorphin was highly correlated (r = 0.861, p < 0.001) with magnitude of heart-rate increase. A subset of those at risk for alcoholism may be characterized by sensitivity to ethanol-induced reward, marked by heightened ethanol-induced, heart-rate increase, mediated by ethanol stimulation of endogenous opiate production. This subset might contain those who, once alcoholic, would differentially benefit from treatment with opiate antagonists.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

A dose-response study of the effects of alcohol on the perceptions of pain and discomfort due to electric shock in men at high familial-genetic risk for alcoholism.

Alcoholics have previously been found to be more sensitive to painful stimulation than controls, and more sensitive to the pain-reducing effects of alcohol. The present study was designed to examine these effects in men at high familial-genetic risk for alcoholism and controls. Subjects were assigned to one of four alcohol doses [0.135 (active placebo), 0.50, 0.75, or 1.00 ml 95% USP alcohol/kg body weight]. Ratings of the amount of discomfort and pain experienced during an aversive shock procedure were taken immediately post-shock, both while subjects were sober and after they had consumed one of the four alcohol doses. High risk men were found to rate the experience of the shock as more uncomfortable and painful overall than the low risk controls. Pharmacologically significant levels of alcohol were found to reduce or eliminate these group differences, suggesting that alcohol has a "normalizing" effect on pain and discomfort perceptions in high risk men. Only the higher doses of alcohol were found significantly to dampen subjects' shock rating scores. High risk males' increased sensitivity to pain and discomfort, combined with the negatively reinforcing effects of reducing these perceptions at moderate to high alcohol doses, may play a role in predisposing high risk males for the development of alcoholism.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1994

Abnormal classical eye-blink conditioning in autism.

Cerebellar and limbic system pathologies have been reported in persons with autism. Because these brain areas are involved centrally in the acquisition and performance in classical eye-blink conditioning, this study evaluated conditioning in 11 persons with autism. Compared to matched controls, persons with autism learned the task faster but performed short-latency, high-amplitude conditioned responses. In addition, differences in learning the extinction rates systematically varied with age thus suggesting a developmental conditioning abnormality in autism. The observed pattern of eye-blink conditioning may indicate that persons with autism have the ability to rapidly associate paired stimuli but, depending on processing of certain contextual information, have impairments in modulating the timing and topography of the learned responses. This abnormality may relate to deviant cerebellar-hippocampal interactions. The classical eye-blink conditioning paradigm may provide a useful model for understanding the biological and behavioral bases of autism.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1994

Risk for alcoholism and classical conditioning to signals for punishment: evidence for a weak behavioral inhibition system?

Nonalcoholic men with high-density family histories of alcohol dependence (high risk) were compared with men with negative family histories (low risk) on a differential classical conditioning protocol that examined the acquisition of conditioned skin conductance responses (SCRs) to a tone (CS+) signaling the occurrence of an electric shock. High-risk Ss had significantly smaller SCRs to the CS+ tone probes during the acquisition phase and poor response discrimination between CS+ probes and CS- tones that were not paired with shock. The low-risk Ss showed a consistent pattern of discrimination between the CS+ and CS- tones. Unresponsivity to the CS+ probes was significantly related to more alcohol-related problems. The results suggest a relationship between risk for alcohol abuse and poor conditioning to signals for punishment, possibly reflecting weak behavioral inhibition system processes (D. C. Fowles, 1987).

Adult↗