INIMEC - CONICET   05467
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACION MEDICA MERCEDES Y MARTIN FERREYRA
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Evaluation Of Decision Making In Healthy Adolescents: Performance Under Different Conditions Of Information And Acute Alcohol Intoxication
Autor/es:
CASTILLO I; ACUÑA I; LAMAS I; BUSTOS I; PAUTASSI RM; BECHARA A; GODOY JC
Lugar:
Paris, France
Reunión:
Congreso; 2010 International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism (ISBRA) World Congress; 2010
Institución organizadora:
International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism (ISBRA)
Resumen:
Introduction: Somatic Marker Hypothesis is a neurocognitive model that explainsthe role of emotions in Decision-Making (DM). Within this framework, emotions areconsidered as somatic markers (SM), which will help in DM process, doing fasterand easier this process. SMs are the result of linking previous choices with theirconsequences, specially the emotional ones. The brain area in charge of linkingchoices with emotions is ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC). In that way, themain aim of this work was to assess DM in healthy adolescents assigned to differentconditions regarding both, acute alcohol intoxication and information about intoxication.To meet this goal, the task used was the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT).Methods: A balanced placebo design with pre- and postest was used to create fourgroups: told Alcohol/got Alcohol (A/A), told Alcohol/got Placebo (A/P), told Placebo/gotAlcohol (P/A), told Placebo/got Placebo (P/P). Sample consisted of 73 adolescentsfrom 18 to 25-years old who voluntarily accepted to participate in the study. Collecteddata was analyzed using repeated measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).Results: Results showed that those who received alcohol had a lower performance onIGT compared to those who did not receive alcohol. This effect was deeper in women.Results regarding expectancies about receiving, or not, an alcohol beverage weresomewhat counterintuitive for the first stage of the IGT, but were similar to thosereported in the literature during the final stage of the task. Specifically, during thefirst stage, even when alcohol was administered, participants in group P/A had anadvantageous performance. However, during the final stage, expectancies seemedto play a more salient role, since participants of this group showed the poorerperformance, even lower than performance of participants from A/A group.Discussion: These results showed that alcohol interferes with generation and retrievalof SMs. Similar outcomes has been reported in different studies conducted with addictsand patients with VMPC lesions. This suggests that acute alcohol intake could impairVMPC performance and in turn, impair the emotional signaling process, causing adisadvantageous DM. In addition, expectancies have shown to be a modulating factorof pharmacological effects of alcohols, which is consistent with the current literature