Objective: The concept of disinhibition as a behavioral and biological trait has been considered to be involved in the etiology of alcoholism and its co-existing disorders. The magnitude and functional mapping of event-related potential P3(00) components were analyzed, in order to examine the possible response inhibition deficits in the offspring of alcoholics.
Methods: The P3 components were compared between 50 offspring of alcoholics (OA) and a matched normal control group (NC) using a visual Go/NoGo task. The low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was used to analyze the functional brain mapping between groups.
Results: The results indicated that the OA group manifested decreased P3 amplitude during the NoGo but not the Go condition compared to the NC group. The voxel-by-voxel analysis in LORETA showed group differences at several brain regions including prefrontal areas during the processing of NoGo but not Go signals.
Conclusions: The decreased NoGo-P3 suggests that cognitive and neural disinhibition in offspring of alcoholics may serve as a neurocognitive index for a phenotypic marker in the development of alcoholism and related disorders.
Significance: Dysfunctional neural and response inhibition in the offspring of alcoholics perhaps provides an endophenotypic marker of risk for the development of alcoholism and related disorders.