TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2010//
TI  - Drinking and future thinking: acute effects of alcohol on prospective memory and future simulation
JO  - Psychopharmacology
A1  - Paraskevaides, Theadora
A1  - Morgan, C. J. A.
A1  - Leitz, Julie R.
A1  - Bisby, James A.
A1  - Rendell, Peter G.
A1  - Curran, H. Valerie
SP  - 301
EP  - 308
VL  - 208
IS  - 2
N2  - 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 0033-3158
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00213-009-1731-0
ID  - ref1
ER  -