Together, these human and rodent findings suggest a promising area of research that could provide better consilience between human and animal physiological responses to alcohol. In addition, with the substantial clinical literature examining alcohol-induced heart rate changes in alcoholics versus controls or FHP versus FHN individuals, future work with rodents should include similar comparisons. It should be noted, however, that the locomotor and heart rate changes tend to indicate increased sensitivity in at-risk subjects administered alcohol, and therefore are in the direction opposite to a uniform interpretation of an underlying low LR phenotype. The locomotor activation data are complicated by the puzzling fact that the species (rat) not generally activated shows the relationship with drinking quite clearly, while the data in mice (usually strongly activated) are generally negative. In the area of electrophysiological responses, more work needs to be done to study a larger array of selectively bred rat and mouse lines and other informative genotypes for their electrophysiological responses to alcohol using measures that are equivalent to those studied in humans.
