Evoked gamma band response in male adolescent subjects at high risk for alcoholism during a visual oddball task

This study investigates early evoked gamma band activity in male adolescent subjects at high risk for alcoholism (HR; n = 68) and normal controls (LR; n = 27) during a visual oddball task. A time–frequency representation method was applied to EEG data in order to obtain stimulus related early evoked (phase-locked) gamma band activity (29–45 Hz) and was analyzed within a 0–150 ms time window range. Significant reduction of the early evoked gamma band response in the frontal and parietal regions during target stimulus processing was observed in HR subjects compared to LR subjects. Additionally, the HR group showed less differentiation between target and non-target stimuli in both frontal and parietal regions compared to the LR group, indicating difficulty in early stimulus processing, probably due to a dysfunctional frontoparietal attentional network. The results indicate that the deficient early evoked gamma band response may precede the development of alcoholism and could be a potential endophenotypic marker of alcoholism risk.