ESBRA–NORDMANN 1998 AWARD LECTURE: VISUAL P3 AS A POTENTIAL VULNERABILITY MARKER OF ALCOHOLISM: EVIDENCE FROM THE AMSTERDAM STUDY OF CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS

Recent data from the Amsterdam Study of Children of Alcoholics add to the evidence for considering the P300 or P3 component of the event-related potential (ERP) as a potential vulnerability marker of alcoholism. In this study, multi-channel ERPs were recorded from 7- to 18-year-old children of alcoholics (COAs) and age- and sex-matched low-risk controls using several experimental paradigms, including a visual novelty oddball task and a visual selective attention task. The results indicated that differences between COAs and controls in the visual P3 amplitude: (1) can be elicited both actively by task-relevant target stimuli and passively by irrelevant novel stimuli; (2) are a function of both the attentional relevance and the target properties of the eliciting stimulus; (3) are mediated by multiple brain generators, rather than by a single generator; (4) originate from a difference in the strength, rather than in the spatial configuration, of the underlying brain generators; (5) cannot be accounted for by differences in visual attention-related earlier occurring ERP components; and (6) can be moderated by current behavioural and emotional problems, general intellectual ability, and socio-economic background. These findings support the notion that a relatively small visual P3 amplitude in COAs reflects heritable biases in attention and information processing that are related to their increased vulnerability to alcoholism.