Correlates of Alcoholic Blackout Experience
10
others [8, 9], blackouts were not related to duration of problem. The
hypotheses that blackouts either reflect a general vulnerability to the cerebral
consequences of alcohol abuse or are associated with other forms of more
enduring cognitive impairment did not receive any support. In this finding the
present study agrees with Tarter and Schneider [8], which to the author’s
knowledge is the only other study to have examined this relationship.
The lack of a relationship between duration of problem drinking and the
presence of blackouts is interesting in the light of the finding that blackouts
may occur early on in drinking careers [5, 7]. This, and the findings of the
current study are consistent with Lishman’s [25] suggestion that there may be
different and independent routes to the several forms of alcohol-related
cerebral impairment. One possibility is that the locus of the short-term
blackout effect is in the hippocampus [26, 27] whereas the cognitive
inefficiencies frequently found among alcoholics [28] may be more related to
enduring damage to the frontal cortex as a consequence of long term alcohol
abuse [29].
The results are somewhat limited by methodological concerns. It could
perhaps be argued that presence/absence of blackouts is a rather crude
measure and information regarding age of onset; number, duration and
intensity might have yielded more sensitive and powerful indices of blackout.
Certainly, it would be useful to have such indices, but they were not included