The Neuropsychological and Socio-cognitive variables correlated to alcohol use and abuse

The Incentive Sensitization Theory of Addiction claims that drug induced changes in the brain. We tested the capacity of cognitive processes in alcohol dependent patients (clinical study) to determine the effects of the alcohol on the cognitive functioning. Moreover, with the repetitive drug consumption, the mesocorticolimbic system becomes sensitized attributing an incentive salience to the drug and drug related stimuli. Once that the drug related stimuli become attention grabbing, there is an increased probability that the addicted individual would seek and likely take the drug (Robinson and Berridge, 2001). We tried to identify the automatic processes that underlie the attentional bias toward the drug related stimuli in the alcohol addiction. We propose two automatic predictors of the attentional bias toward the alcohol related stimuli: the automatic self relevance of the alcohol or drug ‘wanting’ and the automatic evaluation of the alcohol or drug ‘liking’. Both predictors were measured with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The attentinal bias toward the alcohol related stimuli was measured with the Visual Probe Task.