The pattern in the high LR subjects of increasing BOLD response contrast from placebo to alcohol may indicate that these individuals require greater cognitive and affective effort to process information after alcohol than following placebo. This result may be more in tune with what an individual expects to happen when consuming ethanol, and may contribute to the greater ability of high LR subjects to recognize intoxication. Such perturbations of CNS functioning by alcohol in individuals with high LRs may contribute to their more intense reaction to the effects of this drug as evidenced by greater alcohol-related increases in ACTH and prolactin, increased latency of the P300 wave of event-related potentials, and more prominent alcohol effects regarding changes in alpha rhythm on background cortical electroencephalograms [4, 12–16]. Those physiological changes might further enhance a person’s ability to recognize the effects of alcohol at the moderate doses used in our alcohol challenge paradigms.
