Because we focused on adolescent participants in this study, it is not possible for us to directly compare the consequences of alcohol use in adolescents and adults. Nevertheless, our findings appear to conflict with predictions of increased susceptibility to P300 reductions in children and adolescents compared to adults (Polich et al., 1994). Such predictions arise from the fact that the developing brain is particularly vulnerable to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol (Gogtay et al., 2004; Sowell et al., 2004). Age-related vulnerability to the deleterious effects of alcohol may, however, be moderated by other factors, including, importantly, genetic vulnerability to alcoholism (Hill and Shen, 2002) and brain differences associated with psychiatric comorbidity (Bauer and Hesselbrock, 1999, 2003). On the other hand, the relative plasticity of the adolescent brain may facilitate recovery from neurotoxic events such as alcohol exposure, thus contributing to limited changes in the P300 following alcohol exposure (Benton and Tranel, 2000). Indeed, our results appear to be consistent with this notion. Taken together, and with regard to age-dependent effects on the P300, it appears that (a) relatively reduced cumulative
