Reward and feedback evaluation as a behavioral process has come under special scrutiny in the context of addictive and impulsive disorders. Correlates of valence attached to the negative and positive consequences of behavior have been studied using ERPs in alcoholics and those at risk for AUDs. While there have been very few ERP studies examining reward/feedback processing in alcoholics, they provide interesting insights. Probably the first study of this kind was done by Porjesz et al. (1987a), who reported decreased P3 amplitude in response to incentive stimuli in abstinent alcoholics. More recently, using the balloon analogue risk task (BART), which measures risk-taking propensity, Fein and Chang (2008) reported smaller amplitude in feedback negativity in FHP treatment-naive alcoholics compared to controls. Although these findings support the notion that alcoholics have a specific deficiency in reward evaluation, the nature of these deficits is still not clear due to the paucity of such studies in alcoholics. Increased impulsivity and risk taking have been found in alcoholics with reduced components to outcome/feedback stimuli during a gambling task (Kamarajan et al., 2010).
