Citation

Paraskevaides T, Morgan CJ, Leitz JR, Bisby JA, Rendell PG, Curran HV. Psychopharmacology 2010; 208(2): 301-308.

Affiliation

Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, Research Department of Clinical, Health and Educational Psychology, University College London, Gower St., London, WC1E 6BT, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00213-009-1731-0

PMID

19967530

Abstract

BACKGROUND: It has recently been shown that acute alcohol globally impairs 'prospective memory' (PM)-remembering to do something in the future (Leitz et al. in Psychopharmacology 205:379-387, 2009). In healthy, sober individuals, simulating future events at encoding enhances PM performance. AIMS: We therefore aimed to determine if future event simulation could attenuate the impairing effects of acute alcohol on PM. METHODS: Using a double-blind independent group design, 32 healthy volunteers were administered a 0.6-g/kg dose of ethanol or matched placebo. PM performance was assessed using a behavioural task, the 'Virtual Week', which was adapted to enable future event simulation in both remote and recent contexts. Episodic memory was indexed with a source memory task and planning with the Tower of London task. RESULTS: We replicated the finding of Leitz et al. that acute alcohol consumption impairs prospective memory for event-based tasks. Future event simulation significantly improved PM performance on these tasks and eliminated the PM deficit caused by acute alcohol consumption. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first evidence that future event simulation can overcome alcohol-induced deficits in prospective memory and may have important clinical implications for the rehabilitation of chronic alcohol users.

Language: en