Investigating Conditioned Threat Responses and Alcohol Use Among College Students

Alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence in college students is an ongoing problem that has been associated with several different psychological disturbances and disorders. High alcohol preference has been associated with high fear-potentiated startle (FPS) magnitude in mouse lines, but alcohol consumption itself has hardly any effect on decreasing fear responses (Barrenha & Chester, 2007; Barrenha et al., 2011). There may be a relationship between overconsumption of alcohol and a predisposition to higher baseline FPS and fear learning in humans. It is hypothesized that students who report high alcohol consumption will also show amplified overall FPS responses in a fear conditioning paradigm. Participants were 71 college students at a southeastern university who received introductory course credit for their participation. Upon completing the Kreek-Mchugh-Schluger-Kellog (KMSK) scale survey for alcohol consumption, participants were then prepared for their participation in a fear conditioning paradigm. The fear conditioning paradigm is a pre-clinical model measuring fear learning and memory translated from fear conditioning paradigms used frequently in animal studies. It is composed of three blocks of fear acquisition where participants observe two conditioned stimuli: one paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) in the form of an air blast to the throat (CS+) and another not paired with the US used as a safety cue (CS-). Extinction is composed of four blocks and participants are presented with the CS+ and CS- without the US. Uniformly, participants who scored high in alcohol consumption startled higher to both conditioned stimuli in the paradigm compared to participants who scored low in alcohol consumption. Although the results were not statistically significant, there is a consistent difference in the magnitude of the startle response depending on participants’ high and low alcohol scores