Brain signatures of monetary loss and gain: outcome-related potentials in a single outcome gambling task.

This study evaluates the event-related potential (ERP) components in a single outcome gambling task that involved monetary losses and gains. The participants were 50 healthy young volunteers (25 males and 25 females). The gambling task involved valence (loss and gain) and amount (50 cent and 10 cent) as outcomes.

A novel non-parametric regression reveals linkage on chromosome 4 for the number of externalizing symptoms in sib-pairs.

In this report, we present results of a genome-wide linkage scan using as a phenotype the number of externalizing symptoms associated with alcohol use disorders. Subjects were collected by the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism project from families in which at least three first degree relatives were affected by alcohol dependence. We use a novel non-parametric regression method based on kernel smoothing for our analysis.

Family-based association analyses of alcohol dependence phenotypes across DRD2 and neighboring gene ANKK1.

Background: There is an extensive and inconsistent literature on the association of the dopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2) with alcohol dependence. Conflicting results have been attributed to differences in the severity of the alcohol dependence phenotype across studies, failure to exclude related disorders from comparison groups, and artifacts of population-stratification. Recently the genetic polymorphism most widely analyzed in DRD2, Taq1A, has been discovered to reside in a neighboring gene, ankyrin repeat and kinase domain containing 1 (ANKK1), located 10 kb downstream from DRD2.

Genetic influences on bipolar EEG power spectra.

The EEG bipolar power spectra provide more localization than spectral measures obtained from monopolar referencing strategies, and have been shown to be useful endophenotypes of psychiatric disorders such as alcoholism. We estimated the additive genetic heritability of resting bipolar EEG power spectra in a large sample of non-twin sibling pairs. The corresponding heritabilities ranged between 0.

Reduced frontal lobe activity in subjects with high impulsivity and alcoholism.

Objective: Impulsivity is an important characteristic of many psychiatric disorders, including substance-related disorders. These disinhibitory disorders have a similar underlying genetic diathesis, with each disorder representing a different expression of the same underlying genetic liability. This study assessed whether there is a relationship between impulsivity and alcohol dependence, and their correlations with P3 (P300) amplitude, a proposed endophenotype of alcoholism.