Low cognitive flexibility as a risk for heavy alcohol drinking in non-human primates.

ABSTRACT: Chronic alcohol abuse is frequently considered a habitual or inflexible behavior; however, measures of pre-existing cognitive flexibility prior to initiation of alcohol use are usually not available. This study used rhesus monkeys and an attentional set-shifting task to investigate whether pre-existing cognitive flexibility would predict increased risk for heavy alcohol drinking. As previously reported, monkeys were given 30 daily set-shifting sessions prior to alcohol access. These sessions consisted of the same sequence of eight unique visual discriminations (sets) of two objects that varied on two dimensions (shapes and colors). The ratio of errors per trials, session duration, and maximum set reached were primary dependent variables from each session and were used to compose a session

SUBMITTER: Shnitko TA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6202248 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature