amplitude in samples of ‘at risk’ children/adolescents (Begleiter et al., 1984; Begleiter et al., 1987; Berman et al., 1993) as well as in young adults (O’Connor et al., 1986; O’Connor et al., 1987; Ramachandran et al., 1996; Cohen et al., 1997a; Ramsey and Finn, 1997; Kamarajan et al., 2005b). A meta-analytic study revealed that P3 reduction was more robust in younger male subjects with family history of alcoholism and showed higher effect sizes for younger ages than for older subjects (Polich et al., 1994). There are a host of factors that can affect the trajectory of gender-specific development including sexual dimorphism of brain maturation (De Bellis et al., 2001; Lenroot et al., 2007; Lenroot and Giedd, 2010), which can be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors (Lenroot and Giedd, 2008; Lenroot et al., 2009a; Lenroot et al., 2009b).
