Alcohol

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What did Nutt et al (2007) find?
Alcohol is more dangerous than ketamine and less dangerous than cocaine and heroin
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What did Nutt et al (2010) change about the study?
increased the criteria to 16 from 9, scores from 0-100 from 0-3, differential weighting of criteria to indicate their different importance
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Why is alcohol the most harmful?
Because of its harmfulness to the user and the harmfulness to others
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What are the acute psychological effects of alcohol?
Decreased tension/anxiety, impaired memory, directly rewarding effects of alcohol
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What are psychological effects of chronic excessive alcohol consumption?
Neuropharmacological adaptations, withdrawal symptoms and alcohol dependence, severe and chronic cognitive deficits due to brain shrinkage
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What are the non specific effects?
Interactions with lipid bilayer; mainly at higher concentrations
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What are the specific effects?
Interaction with ligand gated ion channels and votage gated ion channels; at concentrations within range achieved by common alcholo consumption
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What receptors are hit?
NMDA, GABA A, glycine and 5HT3, nACH
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What voltage gated ion channels?
Ltype, Ca2+ channels and GIRKs
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What does this lead to?
Cascade of synaptic events involving many neurotransmitters
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What variables can affect the effect of alcohol?
environmental variables, cognitive set, mood, age, sex, exposure to other drugs, dose, rate of ingestions, time of testing post ingestions, time of day
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What effects on behaviour can alcohol cause?
relaxaton, decreased alertness, loss of motor coordination, slurred speech, stagering, mental confusion, conscious but unaware of surroundings, coma
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What can alcohol do?
alcohol acts as an indirect agonist at GABA A receptors, enhances the response of the major inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA
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What is the cat odour avoidance test?
If you give a safe and dangerous side, the mouse who has had the beer is more likely to spend mroe time on the dangerous side
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What does alcohol cause?
amnesia, such as memory loss
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What can the amnesia range to?
memory lapse, to fragmentary or to block black outs, where complete absence of memory for experiences under alcohol influence
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What is state dependence?
Information learnt in a drugged state, may be remembered better if tested in a comparable drugged state, than in a non drugged state
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What can state dependence of memory do?
Partly account for alcohol induced amnesia
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What has alcohol been shown to do?
Render some aspects of declarative memory state dependent, there is also evidence for asymmetric state dependence, ie retrieval was especially reduced in the AS group but less so in the SA group
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What was the first Day in the word association test?
Learning phase, subjects were asked to respond to 10 words with the first word that comes to mind
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What was the second day in the word association test?
Recall phase, subjects were cued with the words and asked to recall their response from day 1
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Which finding supports state dependent recall?
difference between AA and AS is best explained by state dependence
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What are the possible mechanisms of state dependence?
Alcohol mainly interferes with encoding of new declarative information, similar to damage to the hippocampus. Thus, interference with hippocample synaptic mechanisms of memory may contribute to alcohol induced amnesia
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For example?
Alcohol disprups the induction of hippocampal long term potentiation an activity dependent long lasting increase in synaptic strength and a candidate physiological mehcanism of memory
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What happens at baseline transmission?
Glutamate goes into the AMPA receptor
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What does the intense stimulation lead to?
expulsion of magnesium ions from NMDA receptors and influx of both sodium and calcium ions
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what does this lead to?
An increase in AMPA receptor numbers or receptor efficiency
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What happens when AMPA receptor numbers are increased?
allows more current through leading to a larger epsp
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What happens when the AMPa receptors are chemically modified?
each receptor allows more current through leading to a larger EPSP
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What does alcohol interfere with?
encoding of new declarative information, similar to damage to the hippocampus. Thus intereference with hippocampal synaptic mechanisms of memory may contribute to alcohol induced amnesia
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For example?
Alcohol disrupts the induction of hippocampal long term potentiation an activity dependent long lasting increase in synaptic strength and a candidate physiological mechanism of memory
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Why do so many people drink alcohol?
REwards activate mesocoricolimbic dopamine transmission
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What measures neurotransmitters?
Intracerebral microdialsis
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What can drugs of abuse lead to?
An increase in accumbal dopamine levels
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How can chronic excessive alcohol use lead to alcohol dependence?
Tolerance in response to repeated use leaads to reduced acute alcohol effects
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What is long term compensatory changes?
In neural mechanisms in response to chronic excessive alcohol use lead to chronic pyschological changes when sober
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What are opposed?
Compensatory changes
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What is decreased?
GABA-A receptor function
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What is increased?
glutamate receptor stimulation and function (compensating for decreased glutamate and NDMA receptor function in response to acute alcohol
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What withdrawal symptoms can occur
seizures, tremor, withdrawal anxiety and alcohol craving
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What brain damage occurs?
excitotoxic brain damage
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What is Wernicke korsakoff syndrome?
Caused by thyamine deficiency, most commonly in association with alcoholism, paralyse of eye muscles, confusion and ataxia
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What is Korsakoff amnesia?
Remains after treatment of acute Wernike syndrome if thiamine deficience lasted too long; global impairment in forming new declarative memory servere brain shrinkage, especially striking degeneration of the mammilarly bodies
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What are cognitive deficits and brain shrinkage in uncomplicated alcoholics?
Even alcoholics without WKS, may present with deficits in sensori-motor and executive functions, learning and memory and show marked fronto-cerebellar brain damage
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What did Nutt et al (2010) change about the study?

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increased the criteria to 16 from 9, scores from 0-100 from 0-3, differential weighting of criteria to indicate their different importance

Card 3

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Why is alcohol the most harmful?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

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What are the acute psychological effects of alcohol?

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Card 5

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What are psychological effects of chronic excessive alcohol consumption?

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