We developed a novel IV alcohol self‐administration paradigm to assess preference for high rates of change of BrAC as a potential underlying risk factor for AUD. By allowing participants to directly control how quickly their BrAC changed for each reward interval, we tested the primary hypothesis that their self‐administered alcohol exposure profile is associated with recent binge and high‐intensity drinking. In addition, we explored the underlying reasons including the role of subjective sensitivity to rate of change of alcohol exposure and family history density of AUD amongst other AUD‐related risk. Then, based our results implicating family history density of AUD and recent binge and high‐intensity drinking, we tested whether the interview‐based associations found in our laboratory study replicated in a much larger sample population from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) (Appendix A).
