The Effects of Stress and Placebo Alcohol on Cognitive Activation and Inhibitory Control in Male Problem Gamblers and Problem Gamblers with Alcohol Use Disorder

• Main Author: Steinberg, Lindsay
• Other Authors: Busto, Usoa
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: Gambling; Alcohol; Stress; Inhibitory Control; 0317; 0384
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/18878

This experiment studied relapse by assessing the separate/combined effects of two instigators: alcohol cues and stress on the salience of alcohol/gambling target stimuli and inhibitory control in twelve male problem gamblers and twelve male comorbid drinker-gamblers. Our study day consisted of two test sessions. Subjects received alcohol (non-alcoholic beer) and/or stress (uncontrollable noise) in a counterbalanced method. Hypotheses were tested using computer-based tasks, including the modified Stroop, gambling-word Shift Task, and the conventional and modified Stop-Signal Tasks. Stimuli with incentive value divert attention (i.e., are salient) selectively based on their clinical relevance to the subject and the nature of the instigating factor – stress (expected negative reinforcement) vs. anticipation of alcohol (expected positive reinforcement). Results suggest that alcohol cues and stress have differing effects on incentive salience, and disinhibit behaviour in both pathological populations. These findings have the potential to facilitate treatment and improve understanding for relapse prevention in these subjects.