ALCOHOL, MEMORY AND AFFECTIVE REGULATION

自动和内隐记忆过程以及调节负面情绪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;奥布莱恩等人，1992;罗宾逊和贝里奇，1993;蒂芙尼，1990）。对有多代酒精使用障碍（FHP）家族史的人与没有这种家族史（FHN）的人进行比较的研究表明，记忆功能和情感调节存在差异，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有限，因为研究很少包括在同一范式中的心理生理唤醒和记忆中断的措施，并且没有检查酒精选择性地破坏情绪化刺激的外显与内隐记忆处理的程度。这个应用程序的目标是更好地了解酒精对内隐和外显记忆的影响，以及对FHP和FHN人的中性，积极和情绪困扰刺激的心理生理反应。一个序列的三个实验提出：实验1探讨是否酒精的多种形式的内隐和外显记忆过程的解离不同，在高与低风险的家族史组。实验2检验了酒精对 内隐和外显记忆的情绪唤起与中性词刺激，评估刺激编码过程中的心理生理反应，并测试FHP和FHN人的长期记忆巩固的差异影响。实验3探讨了这些问题，使用情绪唤起图片刺激，已被进一步表征为具有不同的积极与消极的情感效价。来自实验2和3的数据将进一步用于探索自主平衡和适应性的心率变异性测量是否可以 描述酒精对高风险和低风险人群动态情感自我调节过程的影响。建议的实验序列系统地建立在我们以前的酒精和记忆研究的方式，应该产生进一步的知识酒精的影响，内隐和外显，即时和长期的记忆过程，以及如何这些协变与唤醒反应的言语和图片刺激，不同的情绪显着性。这些发现将有助于研究酒精对高风险和低风险人群的影响的“压力反应抑制”模型的预测，并可能最终有助于从人类行为的角度改进成瘾模型，该模型消除了无意记忆过程的操作和调节负面影响的困难，从而导致成瘾脆弱性。

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.