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Presentation 1: Many behaviors posing significant risks to public health are characterized by repeated decisions to forego better long-term outcomes for immediate temptations. This steep discounting of delayed outcomes is correlated with addictions (e.g., substance abuse, obesity) and impactful behaviors such as seatbelt use and early sexual activity. As evidence accumulates that steep delay discounting plays a causal role in these maladaptive behaviors, researchers have begun identifying experimental methods for reducing discounting. This presentation will provide a systematic review of this literature, highlighting successes and areas in which further research is needed.
Presentation 2: High levels of impulsivity (delay discounting [DD], relative preference for smaller but immediate rewards over larger but delayed rewards) are associated with various psychopathologies including alcohol use disorder. Data indicate that there are genetic influences on DD and on the development of alcohol use disorder, but the genetic relationships amongst DD and alcohol consumption and other heritable features of alcohol response are unclear. This presentation will describe several techniques used to examine the role of genetics in behavior in animal models and a series of studies using them to examine the genetically-based co-relationships between excessive alcohol use and steep delay discounting. In these studies, male mice were exposed to the adjusting amount procedure (Richards et al. 1997, J Exp Anal Behav, 67, 353-366). This procedures requires mice to choose between a small, immediate sucrose-solution reward and a larger sucrose-solution reward that is delayed 0, 2, 4, 8 or 12 s on different sessions. In one study, behavior for 11 inbred strains was assessed, and genetic correlations with ethanol-associated endophenotypes derived. Other studies assessed DD in lines selected for differing levels of ethanol withdrawal symptomatology or ethanol consumption, and correlations between DD and responses to passively administered ethanol in a heterogeneous mouse stock to identify novel phenotypic targets. Data suggest that DD has a heritable component in mice, and is genetically associated with chronic withdrawal and consumption, but that effect sizes are small. Implications for human alcohol use and delay discounting will be discussed and knowledge gaps identified.