Virginia Institute for Psychiatric & Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298-0126, USA.
Addict Biol. 2010 Apr;15(2):217-26. doi: 10.1111/j.1369-1600.2009.00190.x.
There are well-established links between impulsivity and alcohol use in humans and other model organisms; however, the etiological nature of these associations remains unclear. This is likely due, in part, to the heterogeneous nature of the construct of impulsivity. Many different measures of impulsivity have been employed in human studies, using both questionnaire and laboratory-based tasks. Animal studies also use multiple tasks to assess the construct of impulsivity. In both human and animal studies, different measures of impulsivity often show little correlation and are differentially related to outcome, suggesting that the impulsivity construct may actually consist of a number of more homogeneous (and potentially more meaningful) subfacets. Here, we provide an overview of the different measures of impulsivity used across human and animal studies, evidence that the construct of impulsivity may be better studied in the context of more meaningful subfacets, and recommendations for how research in this direction may provide for better consilience between human and animal studies of the connection between impulsivity and alcohol use.
冲动性和酒精使用之间在人类和其他模式生物中有明确的联系；然而，这些关联的病因性质仍不清楚。这可能部分归因于冲动性这一概念的异质性。人类研究中使用了许多不同的冲动性衡量标准，包括问卷和实验室任务。动物研究也使用多种任务来评估冲动性的结构。在人类和动物研究中，不同的冲动性衡量标准通常相关性不大，与结果的相关性也不同，这表明冲动性结构实际上可能由多个更同质（可能更有意义）的亚方面组成。在这里，我们概述了人类和动物研究中使用的不同冲动性衡量标准，证明冲动性结构在更有意义的亚方面的背景下可能更好地进行研究，并为如何朝着这个方向进行研究提供了建议，以促进人类和动物研究之间在冲动性和酒精使用之间的联系上更好地一致性。
