Emotional memory bias in binge drinking women

Background: Heightened emotionality and over representation of memories are typical features of adolescence. Binge drinking (BD) during emerging adulthood has been linked to cognitive difficulties such as deficits inepisodic memory. Despite that impairments in emotional functioning have been associated with the develop-ment of alcohol use disorders, particularly in females, the emotional sphere has been relatively un exploredin BDs.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of BD in emotional episodic memory from a gender perspective.

Methods: One hundred and eighty (96females) university students were followed during two years(18 -20years old) and their alcohol use was recorded. In the last assessment,participants completed an emotionallist-learning task. Generalized linear mixed models were applied separately for males and females, in accordance with sex differences in the development of emotion circuitry.

Results: In females, BD was associated with an emotional memory bias in favour of negative information andlower recall of positive and neutral words. In addition, females BDs showed more false alarms for negative distractors. Where as in males,no alcohol-related effects were found.

Conclusions: Female BDs present a negative memory bias, poor learning and delayed episodic recall linked to the interference of negative content, which suggests difficulties in disengaging attention to salient negative stimuli and a reduction of inhibitory capacities.This might resulting reater vulnerability to alcohol-related emotional disturbances among women. Further research is needed to understand the role of emotional regulation in the escalation of alcohol abuse from a gender perspective.