Amnesia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Amnesia, including details on memory loss, causes, treatment, brain injury,.

Trace eyeblink conditioning in abstinent alcoholic individuals: effects of complex task demands and prior conditioning.

McGlinchey RE, Fortier CB, Capozzi SM, Disterhoft JF

Geriatric, Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA 02130, USA. rmcglin@bu.edu

Chronic misuse of alcohol affects an integrated neural circuit supporting the formation of associative memories acquired during eyeblink classical conditioning (R. McGlinchey-Berroth et al., 1995). The authors of this study investigated single-cue trace conditioning in amnesic and nonamnesic abstinent alcoholic individuals who either were or were not trained in a single-cue delay conditioning task. Overall, untrained alcoholic participants were severely impaired in acquisition, and alcoholic participants previously trained in single-cue delay conditioning performed similarly to untrained control participants. Individual performance in acquisition varied significantly within task but was relatively stable between the trace and delay tasks; there were nonamnesic and amnesic alcoholic participants who acquired responses at a normal rate in both delay and trace conditioning. The similarity of performances in delay and trace conditioning suggests a common source of impairment across both tasks.

Published 16 March 2005 in Neuropsychology, 19(2): 159-70.
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