enhancement predicted poorer hit rates in alcoholics and along with reaction time lag it also correlated with an early onset of AUDs. Impairment in neural inhibition of involuntary attention shifting may be more pronounced in early-onset alcoholics. Grau and colleagues (2001) found that, while the MMN component is abolished with more demanding tasks in chronic alcoholics, it is present in normal controls. It has been suggested that the mechanisms to detect auditory differences may be reorganized in the brains of alcoholics, as revealed by lower scalp current densities in left frontal and right temporal areas during MMN in alcoholics (Marco-Pallares et al., 2007). However, no group differences in MMN amplitude have been reported in young HR offspring (van der Stelt et al., 1997; Rodriguez Holguin et al., 1998).
