Acute alcohol and nicotine effects on reward-dependent learning and habitization in healthy young adults

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ulrich Zimmermann
• Subject Area: Biological Psychiatry
• Term: from 2012 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 186318919

This project aims to investigate how dysfunctional learning and habitization are affected by acute alcohol exposure, and whether individual differences in such alcohol effects can predict later development of AUDs. Thus, part A of this project investigates eighty 18-year-old healthy male subjects (half of them at high risk of developing AUDs), performing behavioral tasks of Pavlovianto- instrumental transfer, probabilistic reversal learning and habitization-devaluation after blinded administration of alcohol or placebo. We investigate how alcohol influences the performance during these tasks, whether alcohol effects differ between high- and low-risk subjects and whether task performance under alcohol predicts the future AUDs. Subjects will be followed up after three years. In part B of this project, we will examine whether alcohol effects on learning and habitization can be generalized to nicotine, which also targets the dopaminergic system. Because smoking rates are extremely high in alcoholics, we are not only interested in the single effects of acute nicotine and alcohol, but particularly in their interaction when administered together. Thus, in part B, 100 healthy subjects (50% females, drinking and smoking socially, neither alcohol nor nicotine dependent) will conduct the same learning and habitization tasks after administration of (1) nicotine, (2) nicotine and alcohol, (3) alcohol, or (4) placebo.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 1617: Learning and Habitisation as Predictors of the Development and Maintenance of Alcoholism
• Participating Persons: Dr. Andrea Kobiella; Professor Dr. Michael Smolka