Although alcohol intoxication affects functioning at multiple levels of the neuraxis, executive abilities in situations of increased complexity or novelty are especially disrupted. Alcohol may interfere with cognitive assessment of novel cues and the capacity to inhibit impulsive responses, contributing to the societally-important hazards, poor impulse control and alcohol dependence. The overall goal of the proposed research is to identify spatial and temporal characteristics of the brain circuits involved in novelty processing and response disinhibition and to determine their dose-related sensitivity to the acute effects of alcohol. A multimodal approach integrates respective advantages of complementary neuroimaging methods. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used in order to determine where the alcohol-induced, changes are occurring. Excellent temporal resolution of magneto- (MEG) and electro-encephalography (EEG) will elucidate the timing of these abnormalities. Furthermore, the candidate's preliminary work suggests that concurrent measures of sympathetic arousal are crucial for interpreting the effects of alcohol upon the integrated response to novelty. Functional investigations will focus on the acute disruptive effects of alcohol on the distributed neural systems underlying novelty processing, inhibitory control and arousal. Healthy subjects will serve as their own controls as they participate in alcohol (low and high dose) and placebo conditions at two different levels of task complexity. In order to achieve these goals, the candidate seeks training in 1) fMRI measurement and analytic techniques including event-related FMRI design, cortical reconstruction and multimodal integration and 2) psychopharmacology of alcohol and drug use and dependence. The integrated training and research program will enable the candidate to independently apply these multimodal imaging tools to advance our knowledge of alcohol's effects on the brain.
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