Effects of alcohol on psychophysiological hyperreactivity to nonaversive and aversive stimuli in men at high risk for alcoholism.

Abstract

Psychophysiological reactivity to nonaversive (1-KHz, 70-db tones) and aversive stimuli (shock) was examined in nonalcoholic men with multigenerational family histories (MFH) of alcoholism and family history negative (FH-) men, while sober and after consuming alcohol. In comparison with FH- Ss, sober MFH Ss had significantly larger skin conductance (SC) orienting responses (ORs), shorter OR latencies, slower habituation rates to the tones, and larger increases in heart rate and vasoconstriction to the shock. Alcohol dampened the magnitude of the SC-OR to the tones and the degree of cardiovascular reactivity to the shocks and increased the habituation rate to the tones in MFH Ss only. Alcohol consumption also increased the SC-OR recovery time in FH- Ss only. The MFH Ss' pattern of psychophysiological hyperreactivity is discussed in terms of a potential dysfunction in stimulus-response regulation.

Effect of Ethanol on Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal System Response to Psychosocial Stress in Sons of Alcohol-Dependent Fathers

“…The observed group differences in the endocrine stress response are consistent with prior reports on autonomic parameters of response to aversive electric shocks and public speaking, where an increased stress-dampening effect of alcohol was found in high-risk subjects (Levenson et al, 1987;Finn et al, 1990;Conrod et al, 1998). In a recent study, Dai et al (2002) used a similar design as reported here to investigate HPA response to stress and alcohol in high-risk subjects.…”

“…Levenson et al (1987) and Sinha et al (1998) found no alcohol effect on anxiety, per se, in a study of family history positive and negative subjects that employed a public speaking task, but did find that autonomic responses were dampened by alcohol. Other authors found that alcohol reduced anxiety, but during anticipation of electric shocks (Finn et al, 1990;Conrod et al, 1998). Thus, our timing to administer the subjective perceptions questionnaire after the TSST might have been inappropriate.…”

“…Interactions between genetic factors and stress were also tested experimentally by subjecting individuals with and without a family history of alcoholism to aversive electric shocks or public speaking tasks while measuring heart rate response, skin conductance level, or pulse transit time as indicators of the stress response. Several authors found a more pronounced stress response (Finn et al, 1990) and a stronger stress-dampening effect of alcohol (Levenson et al, 1987;Finn et al, 1990;Conrod et al, 1998) in high-risk subjects, while Sinha et al (1998) found this difference only in daughters of alcoholics.…”

Effects of chronic swim stress on EtOH-related behaviors in C57BL/6J, DBA/2J and BALB/cByJ mice

“…Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. FHN's [13,17,18,22,24,31,39,43,58,63]. Taken together these data suggest that individual differences in stress reactivity are associated with differences in sensitivity to EtOH's behavioral effects and vulnerability to alcoholism.…”

“…Subjects that are family history positive (FHP) for alcoholism exhibit lesser sensitivity to certain behavioral effects of EtOH than family history negatives (FHN), due to increased acute functional tolerance to the drug's effects [42,52]. Furthermore, some studies find that FHP's have exaggerated autonomic and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-axis activation in response to stress or EtOH challenge, as compared to FHN's [13,17,18,22,24,31,39,43,58,63]. Taken together these data suggest that individual differences in stress reactivity are associated with differences in sensitivity to EtOH's behavioral effects and vulnerability to alcoholism.…”