OKLAHOMA FAMILY HEALTH PATTERNS: A STUDY ACROSS GENERATIONS

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Our long-term goal is to develop a better understanding of persons at risk for alcoholism. Alcohol addiction has genetic and environmental contributions. Family prevalence and adoption studies indicated that the risk for alcoholism is an expression of more basic traits that have heritable components. This study is based on the hypothesis that central nervous system processes that integrate emotional behavior are altered in persons at high risk for alcoholism, relative to low risk persons. We predict that altered emotion processing will have three markers that should distinguish high risk individuals. These are: 1) the person's characteristic balance of positive to negative emotions, 2) emotion-related changes in the stress hormone, cortisol, and 3) a measure of emotion-related change in central activation, the startle eyeblink. Random telephone survey and advertising in the Oklahoma City area will be used to identify the 180 men and women, 18-30 years of age, who are low risk, having a negative family history and social drinking patterns. In Study I, we compare the groups using a standard paradigm to examine startle eyeblink magnitude and the emotion modulation of startle that normally occurs to negative and positive emotion-producing stimuli. In Study II, we extend that paradigm by examining the emotion modulation of the startle eyeblink together with cortisol responses to a negatively affective challenge. Other measures include self reported affective states, cognitive functioning, and risk taking in a gambling simulation. Normal affective response to events depends on interactions among the frontal cortex and limbic areas, while the expression of emotions via motoric and endocrine responses depends on normal regulation by the hypothalamus and brainstem. A finding of consistent changes in affective experience, along with altered peripheral physiological responses, can provide insights into the underlying alterations in emotional behavior in risk for alcoholism.