Although an association between early age alcohol abuse and deficits in decision-making has been documented the question of whether such traits constitute a predisposing factor to, or a consequence of, alcohol exposure remains open. The long-range goal of this proposal is to assess the effects of voluntary adolescent alcohol intake on choice behavior in a rodent model. Because most strains of rats do not freely consume significant amounts of alcohol in solution, these studies will employ an ethanol gelatin preparation that has been shown to yield high levels of intake. The effects of sustained alcohol exposure during adolescence on future risk behavior will be assessed using a probability-discounting operant task. Preliminary data suggest that, while control animals perform this task near optimally, rats that consumed high levels of alcohol during adolescence demonstrate increases in risk preference and sub-optimal decisions when choice is assessed in adulthood after weeks of alcohol abstinence. Building upon this finding, these studies will identify the timing and duration of adolescent alcohol exposure that contributes to increased incidence of risky decisions, examine the extent of the effect of alcohol exposure on choice behavior and use Fos-like immunohistochemistry to identify potential neural correlates for alcohol induced influence on risky choice.
This research aims to expand our current understanding of the potential long-term behavioral and neurobiological effects of early-life alcohol exposure.
| Nasrallah, Nicholas A; Clark, Jeremy J; Collins, Annie L et al. (2011) Risk preference following adolescent alcohol use is associated with corrupted encoding of costs but not rewards by mesolimbic dopamine. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 108:5466-71 |
| Nasrallah, Nicholas A; Yang, Tom W H; Bernstein, Ilene L (2009) Long-term risk preference and suboptimal decision making following adolescent alcohol use. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106:17600-4 |
