Case-Control Study on Sweetness Preference in Alcohol Dependence

The main objective is to investigate the endophenotypic nature of sweet-liking in alcohol-dependence and to verify that the preference for sweetness is more common in subjects that are first-degree relatives of alcohol-dependent subjects than in control subjects. Secondary objectives include: studying specific clinical (precocity, severity), family (family history), temperamental (sensation seeking, impulsiveness) and cognitive traits (measurement of visual hedonic response, IGT decision-making tasks) in alcohol-dependent subjects that prefer the sweetest solutions; investigating the mechanisms involved in this endophenotypic connection and testing the following hypotheses: - Either the preference for the sweetest solutions is secondary to alcohol dependence; - Either the preference for sweetness is a marker of vulnerability to alcohol-dependence (sweetness preference would be a marker of an alcoholic sub-type associated with a higher genetic vulnerability that is close to Cloninger's clinical type 2 classification).