In a recent study examining the N400 component in alcoholics, subjects were required to indicate as rapidly as possible whether a given sequence of letters formed a word. Words preceded by their antonyms (e.g., hot-cold) were more quickly recognized as words than were those preceded by unrelated words or nonsense syllables. In nonalcoholic subjects, the N400 component was elicited by the unprimed words but not by the primed words. However, alcoholics exhibited N400’s to primed and unprimed words alike (Porjesz and Begleiter 1994). This study marks the first time semantic memory deficits have been demonstrated in alcoholics using measures of brain electrical response.
