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Cognitive Deficits in Alcoholics

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Book cover The Biology of Alcoholism

Abstract

The ability to gather, process, store, and respond intelligently to incoming information is obviously affected by alcohol ingestion. However, most investigators interested in this topic have, until recently, focused their attention almost exclusively on the relatively small number of detoxified alcoholics who developed the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. The primary reason for this emphasis is that patients with this neuropsychiatric disorder manifest a set of circumscribed, clinically apparent cognitive impairments that can be dissected and delineated with a great degree of precision. Thus, it is now known that learning and memory skills are most affected, problem-solving and visuopercep-tual abilities are somewhat less disrupted, and intelligence—as assessed by standardized IQ tests—is essentially intact. Armed with the knowledge that chronic alcohol abuse can produce this distinctive pattern of impairment, clinicians active during the 1940s and early 1950s sought evidence of similar deficits in that much larger group of detoxified alcoholics who never show signs of Korsakoff’s syndrome or any other neuropsychiatric disorder. Administering their rather gross measures of cognitive competence to this group of neurologically intact alcoholics, they found few, if any, obvious cognitive deficits and concluded that beverage alcohol was a rather innocuous drug and that significant intellectual impairments would appear only if the heavy drinker were also malnourished.

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  1. Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Christopher Ryan

  2. Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Nelson Butters

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  1. Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York, USA

    Benjamin Kissin  & Henri Begleiter  & 

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Ryan, C., Butters, N. (1983). Cognitive Deficits in Alcoholics. In: Kissin, B., Begleiter, H. (eds) The Biology of Alcoholism. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3518-4_12

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