CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS - ATTENTION, INFORMATION-PROCESSING AND EVENT-RELATED BRAIN POTENTIALS

Recent studies on biological markers and risk factors for alcoholism h ave distinguished between nonalcoholic individuals with a family histo ry of alcoholism and those without such a family history on measures o f event-related brain potentials. The main finding of these ''high-ris k'' studies is a smaller amplitude of the P300 component in males with a history of paternal alcoholism. This relationship between P300 ampl itude and a family history of paternal alcoholism has been observed in adults and children. Consequently, several authors have suggested tha t a reduced P300 amplitude could serve as a vulnerability marker for a lcoholism. We address several conceptual and methodological issues inv olved in the study of event-related potentials in children at high ris k for alcoholism. Subsequently, the ongoing high-risk study of the Ams terdam Institute for Addiction Research is described briefly.