few ERP studies on the reward/outcome processing in individuals diagnosed with alcohol dependence. To our knowledge, there have been only two ERP studies carried out on alcoholics during reward processing. 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 treatment-naive alcoholics with a greater family history density of alcohol problems compared to controls. Although these findings lend support to the notion that alcoholics may have a specific deficiency in reward processing, the nature of these deficits are still not very clear due to the paucity of such studies in alcoholics. Further, there have been as yet no studies of reward processing in alcoholics using a gambling paradigm, and the present study is the first of its kind.
