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Acute alcohol effects may differ in social drinkers with a positive family history of alcohol use disorders (FHP) compared to FH negative (FHN) controls.To investigate whether FHP subjects prefer higher levels of brain alcohol exposure than do FHN controls.Twenty-two young healthy nondependent social drinkers participated in two identical sessions of computer-assisted self-infusion of ethanol (CASE); the first for practicing the procedures, the second to test hypotheses. All 12 FHP (four women) and ten FHN (three women) participants received a priming exposure, increasing arterial blood alcohol concentration (aBAC) to 30 mg% at 10 min and decreasing it to 15 mg% at 25 min. A 2-h self-administration period followed, during which only the subjects could increase their aBAC by pressing a button connected to a computer controlling the infusion pump. Infusion rate profiles were calculated instantaneously to increase aBAC by precisely 7.5 mg% within 2.5 min after each button press, followed by a steady descent. Subjects were instructed to produce the same alcohol effects as they would do at a weekend party.The mean and maximum aBAC during the self-administration period and the number of alcohol requests (NOAR) were significantly higher in the FHP vs. FHN participants.This is the first laboratory experiment demonstrating higher alcohol self-administration in FHP compared to FHN subjects. A practice session increases the sensitivity of CASE experiments for detection of subtle differences in human alcohol self-administration.

Alcohol intoxication is implicated in approximately half of all violent crimes. Over the past several decades, numerous theories have been proposed to account for the influence of alcohol on aggression. Nearly all of these theories imply that altered functioning in the prefrontal cortex is a proximal cause. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, 50 healthy young men consumed either a low dose of alcohol or a placebo and completed an aggression paradigm against provocative and nonprovocative opponents. Provocation did not affect neural responses. However, relative to sober participants, during acts of aggression, intoxicated participants showed decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, caudate, and ventral striatum, but heightened activation in the hippocampus. Among intoxicated participants, but not among sober participants, aggressive behavior was positively correlated with activation in the medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results support theories that posit a role for prefrontal cortical dysfunction as an important factor in intoxicated aggression.

Several studies have shown U- or J-shaped relations between alcohol consumption and the risk of stroke. We evaluated the effect of light-to-moderate alcohol intake on the risk of stroke, with separate analyses of ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke.Our analyses were based on a prospective cohort study of 22,071 male physicians, 40 to 84 years old, who were participating in the Physicians' Health Study. At base line, the participants reported that they had no history of stroke, transient ischemic attack, or myocardial infarction and were free of cancer. Alcohol intake, reported by 21,870 participants at base line, ranged from none or almost none to two or more drinks per day.During an average of 12.2 years of follow-up, 679 strokes were reported. As compared with participants who had less than one drink per week, those who drank more had a reduced overall risk of stroke (relative risk, 0.79; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.66 to 0.94) and a reduced risk of ischemic stroke (relative risk, 0.77; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.63 to 0.94). There was no statistically significant association between alcohol consumption and hemorrhagic stroke. The overall relative risks of stroke for the men who had one drink per week, two to four drinks per week, five or six drinks per week, or one or more drinks per day were 0.78 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.59 to 1.04), 0.75 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.58 to 0.96), 0.83 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.62 to 1.11), and 0.80 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.64 to 0.99), respectively, in an analysis in which we controlled for major risk factors for stroke.Light-to-moderate alcohol consumption reduced the overall risk of stroke and the risk of ischemic stroke in men. The benefit is apparent with as little as one drink per week. Greater consumption, up to one drink per day, does not increase the observed benefit.