ALCOHOL, MEMORY AND AFFECTIVE REGULATION

自动和内隐记忆过程以及负面情绪调节的困难被认为与酒精和其他药物使用障碍的发展和维持有关(Koob&Le Moal；1997；O‘Brien et al.，1992；Robinson&Berbridge，1993；Tiffany，1990)。对有多代酒精使用障碍家族史(FHP)的人和没有这种家族史的人(FHN)进行比较的研究表明，在记忆功能和情感调节方面存在差异，尽管这些差异尚未与 成瘾倾向差异的具体机制。对临床前人群的理解一直有限，因为研究很少在同一范式中同时包括心理生理唤醒和记忆中断的测量，也没有检查酒精选择性地扰乱情绪作价刺激的外显和内隐记忆处理的程度，这些刺激是和不是令人痛苦的。这项应用的目的是更好地了解酒精对FHP和FHN患者内隐和外显记忆的影响，以及对中性、积极和情绪痛苦刺激的心理生理反应。一系列三个实验被提出：实验1检验酒精对多种形式的内隐和外显记忆过程的分离是否在高风险家族史组和低风险家族史组中存在差异。实验2考察了酒精对人的选择作用 内隐和外显记忆用于情绪唤醒和中性词语刺激，评估刺激编码过程中的心理生理反应，并测试FHP和FHN患者对长期记忆巩固的不同影响。实验3使用情绪激起的图片刺激来考察这些问题，这些图片刺激被进一步描述为具有明显的积极和消极的情感效价。实验2和实验3的数据将被进一步用来探索心率变异性测量自主神经平衡和适应性是否可以 描述酒精对高风险人群和低风险人群动态情感自我调节过程的影响。拟议的实验序列系统地建立在我们之前的酒精和记忆研究的基础上，应该会进一步了解酒精对内隐和外显、即时和长期记忆过程的影响，以及这些影响如何与对语言和图片刺激的唤醒反应一起变化，这些刺激在情感突显上有所不同。这一发现将有助于检验高风险和低风险人群中酒精影响的“压力反应抑制”模型的预测，并最终可能有助于从人类行为的角度改进成瘾模型，该模型假设了无意记忆过程的操作，以及在调节导致成瘾易感性的负面情绪方面的困难。

Automatic and implicit memory processes, and difficulties in the regulation of negative affect, are thought to be importantly involved in the development and maintenance of alcohol and other drug use disorders (Koob & Le Moal; 1997; O'Brien et al., 1992; Robinson & Berridge, 1993; Tiffany, 1990). Studies comparing persons with a multigenerational family history of alcohol use disorders (FHP) to those with no such family history (FHN) suggest that there are differences in memory functioning and affective regulation, although these differences have yet to be linked to specific mechanisms that underlie variance in addiction liability. Understanding has been limited in preclinical human populations because research has seldom included measures of both psychophysiological arousal and memory disruption in the same paradigm, and has not examined the extent to which alcohol selectively disrupts explicit versus implicit memory processing of emotionally valenced stimuli that are and are not distressing. The goal of this application is to better understand the influence of alcohol on implicit and explicit memory for, and psychophysiological reactivity to, neutral, positive, and emotionally distressing stimuli in FHP and FHN persons. A sequence of three experiments is proposed: Experiment 1 examines whether alcohol's dissociation of multiple forms of implicit and explicit memory processes differs in high versus low risk family history groups. Experiment 2 examines alcohol's selective effects on implicit and explicit memory for emotionally arousing versus neutral word stimuli, assesses psychophysiological reactivity during stimulus encoding, and tests differential influences on long term memory consolidation in FHP and FHN persons. Experiment 3 examines these questions using emotionally arousing picture stimuli that have been further characterized as having distinct positive versus negative affective valences. Data from Experiments 2 and 3 will further be used to explore whether heart rate variability measures of autonomic balance and adaptability can characterize alcohol effects on dynamic affective self-regulation processes in high and low risk persons. The proposed sequence of experiments builds systematically on our previous alcohol and memory research in a way that should yield further knowledge about alcohol effects on implicit and explicit, immediate and longer term memory processes, and how these covary with arousal responses to both verbal and picture stimuli that vary in emotional salience. The findings will be useful in examining the predictions of "stress response dampening" models of alcohol effects in high and Iow risk groups, and may ultimately help to refine, from a human behavioral perspective, addiction models that posit the operation of unintentional memory processes and difficulties in the regulation of negative affect in contributing to addiction vulnerability.