Objective:

The purpose of this protocol is three fold: 1) to develop methods with which we can evoke positive and negative affect and visualize concomitant brain activation in normal controls, alcoholics, and recovering alcoholics, 2) to determine how individual differences in evoked brain responses relate to generalized trait personality and behavior differences (as assessed by psychometric questionnaire instruments and behavioral measures, and 3) to determine whether individual differences in evoked brain responses relate specifically to genetic polymorphisms in genes governing neurotransmitter activity.

Study population:

Health non-alcoholic adult volunteers, healthy adolescents aged 12 to 18 years (with or without a family history of alcohol use disorder), inpatient or outpatient alcoholics, and recovering alcoholics.

Design:

In this event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we will attempt to evoke positive and negative affect via several different standardized methods including: (1) pictures of emotion-arousing stimuli; (2) pictures of emotional facial expression; (3) cues signaling reward or punishment. This is an omnibus protocol designed to cover many different functional magnetic imaging studies all using similar techniques to evoke and measure positive and negative affect in the brain. Most subjects will not participate in studies involving all methods described in the protocol.

Outcome measures:

The outcome measure is differences in blood oxygenation dependent level (BOLD) signal measured using standard fMRI techniques and analyzed using AFNI software.