A Simple Auditory Oddball Task in Young Adult Males at High Risk for Alcoholism

TLDR

Auditory P300 amplitude reductions in young adult males at high risk for alcoholism have been inconsistently replicated, possibly due to task difficulty, and the clinical relevance of P300 differences is debated. The study aimed to assess auditory P300 amplitude in young adult sons of alcoholics compared with matched controls. The study used a simple auditory oddball task and current source density analysis to compare P300 amplitude between high‑risk sons of alcoholics and matched controls. High‑risk sons of alcoholics showed a markedly reduced auditory P300 amplitude, especially over posterior centro‑parietal and occipital sites, and reduced current source density in posterior central and parietal areas, confirming the oddball task’s sensitivity to risk status.

Abstract

The reduction in the amplitude of the auditory P300 in young adult males at high risk for alcoholism has not been as consistently replicated as has been the reduction in the visual P300 amplitude in the same group. The easier nature of the auditory task was thought to be responsible for the inconsistency. We examined the auditory P300 amplitude in a group that has not yet been studied, young adult sons of alcoholics (mean age = 24.9 years, n = 48), and compared them with age and sex‐matched controls (mean age = 27.8 years, n = 23). We found the auditory P300 amplitude to be reduced in the high‐risk group and this reduction to be the greatest over the posterior centro‐parietal and occipital areas when individual leads were examined. We further analyzed the data using current source density, a mathematical transformation that circumvents some of the errors inherent in measuring scalp‐evoked potentials, and found reduced current source density in the high‐risk group in the posterior central and parietal areas. Thus, we found that a simple auditory oddball task was effective in eliciting P300 differences in groups at high and low risk for alcoholism. The clinical significance of the P300 is discussed, as well as the relevance of task difficulty in eliciting auditory P300 differences in young males at high risk for alcoholism.