While informative, this study does not tell us if alcohol-induced increases in disinhibition are related to alcohol-induced increases in the motivation to drink alcohol, i.e., if alcohol-induced disinhibition might mediate the alcohol priming effect. In the first study to directly investigate this issue, we (46) found that alcohol administration led to increased ad-libitum alcohol consumption, but it did not affect disinhibition (performance on a Go/No-Go task), and disinhibition was unrelated to ad libitum alcohol consumption after alcohol administration. In summary, at present there is no convincing evidence to suggest that state fluctuations in disinhibition mediate the alcohol priming effect, although to date only one study has directly tested this hypothesis.
