%0 Journal Article
%T Drinking and future thinking: acute effects of alcohol on prospective memory and future simulation
%J Psychopharmacology
%D 2010
%A Paraskevaides, Theadora
%A Morgan, C. J. A.
%A Leitz, Julie R.
%A Bisby, James A.
%A Rendell, Peter G.
%A Curran, H. Valerie
%V 208
%N 2
%P 301-308
%X 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.<p /><p>Language: en</p>
%G en
%I Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group
%@ 0033-3158
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00213-009-1731-0