P3 Event-Related Potential Amplitude and the Risk for Disinhibitory Disorders in Adolescent Boys

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Abstract
RESEARCH INDICATES that, compared with the sons of men without alcoholism, the sons of parents who abuse alcohol show reduced amplitude of the P3 component of the electrocortical event-related potential,1 supporting the hypothesis of Begleiter et al2 that P3 amplitude has potential as a biological marker for alcoholism risk. Nevertheless, many relevant issues have not been systematically addressed. Investigators have most often recruited subjects at risk for alcoholism by identifying parents in treatment settings and studying their children.2-20 Such samples are likely to represent particularly severe cases of alcoholism, an ideal place to begin a search for biological markers, but replication in community samples is needed. Other studies have recruited high-risk subjects by means of advertisements soliciting volunteer offspring of parents who abuse alcohol21-25 or by screening undergraduate volunteers for a family history of alcoholism.26-28 Although each source has its advantages, participants who volunteer in response to advertisements and undergraduate recruits may be unusual in several important respects and are not representative of the population of individuals with paternal histories of alcoholism. To our knowledge, there have not yet been any studies assessing P3 amplitude in the sons of parents who abuse alcohol ascertained from an unselected community-based sample representative of subjects with alcoholism in the general population.