alcohol Flashcards
(43 cards)
how are the harms associated with drugs assessed - old version
- physical harm and dependence to users
- social harms to others
- experts assign score 0-3 for each parameter
what is the improved criteria for harms associated with drugs
- 16 criteria
- scores from 0-100
- differential weighting of criteria to indicate their different importance
why is it suggested that alcohol is the most harmful over other drugs
- a combination of an expert assessment of drug harm to users and to others
what are the acute psychological effects of alcohol
- decreased tension/anxiety
- impaired memory
- directly rewarding effects of alcohol
what are the psychological effects of chronic alcohol consumption
- neuropharmacological adaptations, withdrawal symptoms and alcohol dependence
- severe and chronic cognitive deficits due to brain shrinkage - wernicke-korsafokk syndrome
what are the nonspecific effect of alcohol
- interactions with lipid bilayer, mainly at higher concentrations
what are specific effects of alcohol
- interaction with ligand-gated ion channels and voltage-gated ion channels, at concentrations within range achieved by common alcohol consumption
what is the first hit of alcohol process
- first hit is inhibitory activity - dampens down neural activity in the brain
- neurotransmitter receptors
- voltage-gated ion channels
- then a cascade of synaptic events involving many neurotransmitters
what is the primary neuropharmacological targets of alcohol process
1- alters lipid composition
2- interacts with polar heads of phospholipids
3- disturbs the relationship of protein in membrane
4- acts at neurotransmitter binding site
5- modifies gating mechanism inside channel
6- direct interaction with channel protein
7- stimulates G which is linked to adenylyl cyclase
what variables effect the psychological effects of alcohol in humans
- environmental variables
- cognitive set
- mood, arousal and personality factors
- age and sex of subjects
- exposure to other drugs
- nutritional state of subjects
- the dose
- rate of ingestion
- time of testing post ingestion
- type of beverage ingested
what alcohol concentration is lethal
0.45
what is the legal driving limit of alcohol in the UK
between 0.06 and 0.08
how does alcohol reduce tension and anxiety
- alcohol acts as indirect agonist at GABA-A receptors i.e. enhances the response of the major inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA
what did Kushner et al 2000 find about anxiety and alcohol
- commorbidity
what did blanchard et al find about anxiety and alcohol
- alcohol relatively consistently reduces measure of anxiety in rodents
what beer drinking and anxiety researched
- cat odour avoidance test
- elevated plus maze test
how does alcohol interfere with memory
- declarative memory
- alcohol induced anterograde amnesia may range from little memory lapses to ‘fragmentary’ or ‘black outs’
what did Aaron White et al find about alcohol induced memory loss
- asked undergraduates ‘ have you ever woken after a night out and not remembered’
- 51% said yes
how is alcohol induced amnesia explained by state-dependence
- info encoded in a drugged state, may be remembered better if tested in a comparable drugged state
- overton
what is the word association test to check state dependent effect of alcohol
- learning phrase - subjects respond to 10 words with the first word that comes to mind
- recall phase - subjects cued with the words and asked to recall their response from day 1
which group in the word association task had the biggest difference
- biggest difference between those who learned and recalled under alcohol and those who learned with alcohol and recalled sober
what does state dependency explain and not explain according to Goodwin
- explains little memory lapses and fragmentary blackouts
- doesn’t explain en block blackouts
what might contribute to alcohol induced amnesia
- interference with hippocampal synaptic mechanisms of memory may contribute
what did Bliss and Collingridge find alcohol disrupts
the induction of hippocampal long-term potentiation
