Cognitive Deficits of People with Alcohol Dependence

INTRODUCTION: Excessive alcohol consumption is associated with a wide range of cognitive deficits observed in varying degrees among users. The aim of the research was to compare performance across different domains of cognition in a clinical group of people with alcohol dependence and a control group of people without a dependence.

METHODS: The research population consisted of 53 male patients with alcohol dependence treated at the Specialized Psychiatric Institute Predná Hora. For each participant from the clinical group, a participant of the same age and level of educational attainment was selected from the nonclinical population. The NEUROPSY battery tests were used to assess cognitive performance. Significance of differences between clinical and control groups was analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test and indicators of effect size. Sensitivity and specificity of the scales were determined using ROC analyses.

RESULTS: Research findings indicate a lower level of cognitive ability in people with alcohol dependence. The greatest differences were found in the areas of executive function, attention, and memory. The Symbol Encoding Test, Trail Making, and the Verbal Learning Test showed the highest discriminative ability for performance between groups. Differences in phonemic fluency were not found.

CONCLUSIONS: These research findings provide a relatively comprehensive picture of the cognitive performance of people with alcohol dependence. They indicate a lower level of cognitive ability in people with alcohol dependence across all areas measured, except phonemic fluency.