Binge and High-Intensity Drinking: Rate, Acute Tolerance, and Salience

While the harmful pattern of binge and high-intensity drinking is commonly studied in terms of how much someone drinks, how quickly a person drinks alcohol can lead to higher and longer exposure to harmful blood concentrations. The present study seeks to understand how drinking speed is affected by brain systems that respond to reward and by alcohol tolerance, or the loss of alcohol effect within a drinking episode. This work will help identify the brains systems that underlie binge and high intensity drinking and eventually aid the development of treatments.