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Although the vast majority of adults have direct experience of drinking alcohol, there is surprisingly little scientific data on the effects of alcohol on the processing of emotional social information or on sexual arousal, and no data on the effects of alcohol on empathy. Now researchers from the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, have attempted to answer some of the questions around the way alcohol alters the way we relate to others, and how alcohol affects sexual arousal. In a double-blind, random-order, cross-over study, researchers enlisted 60 healthy participants (30 men, 30 women) aged between 18 and 50.They then gave 30 of them a glass of alcoholic beer (0.5L depending on body weight and sex). This raised their blood alcohol content to around 0.4 g/L Thirty control subjects were given non-alcoholic beer. The subjects then underwent a range of tasks, including a face recognition test, empathy test, and sexual arousal test. At the end of the tests, the subjects and ...

"Treating problems with drugs and alcohol once they exist and preventing them can be challenging, and we are always looking for modifiable risk factors," said Brant P. Hasler, Ph.D. , assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology, and lead author of the study. "Doing what we can to ensure sufficient sleep duration and improve sleep quality during late childhood may have benefits in terms of reducing the use of these substances later in life." Researchers analyzed 186 boys from western Pennsylvania whose mothers completed the Child Sleep Questionnaire as part of a larger longitudinal study of low-income boys examining factors associated with vulnerability and resilience. Based on questionnaire results from when the boys were 11 years old, their sleep time and sleep quality were calculated. At ages 20 and 22, the young men were interviewed about lifetime cannabis and alcohol use. After accounting for race, socioeconomic problems , neighborhood danger, self-...